The Sparrow

Lingua disponibile: inglese

In the most low-key way, Sam Prekop has been a lot of things over the course of his career; lit majors might say he contains multitudes. As the singer and guitarist for Chicago-based indie mini-supergroup The Sea And Cake, he has crafted relentlessly genre-forward sophisticated pop that slyly slides toward Brazilian music and jazz since the early 1990s. As a talented and successful photographer and painter, Prekop is able to stretch out and apply a seriously whimsical aesthetic, its slightly cartoonish and minimalist approach to landscape a delightful accompaniment to his musical work. 

Prekop has slowly and without much fanfare developed his own history as an electronic musician. In the early to mid 2010s, as a general interest in new age and experimental electronic music began to surge, dozens of guitarists and vocalists discovered synthesizers and began sideroom hordes of analog equipment. Prekop himself was ahead of that trend, releasing Old Punch Card in 2010, the first thousand vinyl copies featuring hand-painted work from the artist. True to its name, Punch Card tended far more towards the squelchier, more experimental end of the spectrum, even on quieter tracks. 2015's The Republic saw Prekop approach more song-oriented loops and washes, and it was clear he was no dabbler in this stuff. 

It wasn't until recently, on 2020's Comma, that Prekop dove headlong into the deep end of modern ambient sound to emerge with a truly original voice. A bit of it was beat-driven, but all of it had a strong, original hand. Prekop uses a modular synthesizer that he built himself, but he isn't beholden strictly to analog technology and recording techniques. This isn't retro.

The Sparrow is headier and melodic. It's a delightfully modern experimental modular synthesizer record. "Every Night" is a gently flowing, lulling track that adds lovely "kling" and "klang" percussive sounds halfway through. That's really all it is, because that's all it needs to be. Thanks to his decades of work in all these other media, this is music as minimal and pleasant as any by Steve Roach or Prekop's Thrill Jockey labelmates Golden Retriever. It doesn't all stay in that vein, but all of it sounds like Prekop. Crucially, this record isn't on his longtime Chicago-based label; it's for Düsseldorf's forward-thinking label TAL, his first for them.

"Step and Stair" is a melodic almost lounge jazz track with a strong Latin melody that brings it all back home. The gorgeous waterfall of sound that is "Fall is Farewell" is just over five minutes, but you'll want it to go on forever. The title track almost does go on that long, at 17 minutes, as it clicks through Nobukazu Takemura-esque combinations of clipped sounds and long, smooth washes. It changes enough that you'll wonder if it isn't the soundtrack to a film you haven't seen. Perhaps it's up to the listener to provide that source material? © Mike McGonigal/Qobuz