Belong - Realistic Ix

Released: 09/08/2024

The third LP from Belong, the US duo of Michael Jones and Turk Dietrich, is yet more frosty pitch-bended guitar music of the highest order. A kind of mix between the microtonal ambient drones of Seefeel and My Bloody Valentine “ as well as a touch of Chapterhouse, thanks to the employment of skittering drum machine on tracks such as Image of Love' “ Realistic IX is certainly not reinventing the shoe gaze wheel. But the tracks that hew closest to Jones and Dietrich's antecedents, such as the woozy and rough-edged Souvenir', which could sit very happily on Kevin Shields and co.'s Isn't Anything, are expertly done. Plus, on album closer AM / PM', the duo go beyond the purview of their peers by marrying a four-to-the-floor dance beat with diffuse guitars to create a mesmeric slice of hazy, lo-fi ambient EDM.