Rob McAndrews, a.k.a. Airhead, is best known for collaborating with James Blake, which will do as much to foster an audience for his own albums as it will threaten to overshadow them. Like Blake (and his associates in Mount Kimbie), McAndrews makes low-key electronic music that never lets you forget the human presence behind it. In Blake's case, it's his ghostly pillow talk; in McAndrews', it's delicately plucked guitars, grainy field recordings, and a naturalistic sense of drift more akin to ambient music than techno. Portions of his debut, For Years, sound like crosstalk coming in from an open window; others appear to be happening under a pile of leaves. ... |