The Deer Tracks – The Archer Trilogy Pt. 3
And so completes The Archer Trilogy , an ambitious project always designed to evolve and challenge. It’s a journey that’s taken David Lehnberg and Elin Lindfors through elemental glitchtronica, glorious post-rock and straight-up electro-pop, recording and producing everything themselves whilst tucked away in Gävle in their native Sweden.
In retrospect, maybe the only line of predictable progression to draw between the trilogy and the duo’s debut Aurora is one of a sense of gentle thawing. It’s as if Lehnberg and Lindfors started their quest in the depths of a long Nordic winter and now, with Pt. 3 , that spring is beginning to ignite the horizon, melting the permafrost. Certainly, “Lazarus” is as sun-kissed as the pair may ever get, its two-note house repeat blossoming into a blissful Balearic banger.
Serving as a warning however, the ghostly glitch in “Road To” couldn’t be chillier, its barely-there five minutes sounding like the dying echoes of a choir lost out on the creaking ice floe. Its immediate predecessor is no walk in the park either, the deep pulses and classical strings of “The Ghost Hour” racing each other like dedicated cross-county skiing mates.
Though Lehnberg’s compositional palette has always been striking – see the precise tapestry of samples, effects and beats in the wonderful sci-fi opera that is “Divine Light” for proof here – it’s Lindfors’ unimaginably fragile vocal that still sews the project together, imprinting it deeply within the hallways of the heart and mind. An elfin coo, a childlike chirrup, a fanciful bleat – it’s almost weapons-grade in its own sort of way and part three of the trilogy tellingly loses its way during a middle order when Lindfors is reigned in. When she returns later during the very immersive and propulsive electro-popper “Bodiehicle” something seems off however and it’s difficult to say what. Something’s missing, though there is a huge club mix up for grabs here and maybe that is in itself the issue as there are moments during Pt. 3 where Lehnberg and Lindfors don’t quite straddle genres as they used to, sitting instead on the fence, a little unsure if they wish to be DJing beach parties or riding out onto the tundra under the northern lights. While they figure it out, you’d do well to dine out on cuts where they do get their musical kama sutra spot on.
Advised downloads: “Divine Light” and “W”
~The Archer Trilogy Pt. 3 is released June 17th 2013 on The Control Group .~