ISAN - Plans Drawn In Pencil

It has to be admitted plainly: listening electronica isn't doing too well these days. The genre, whose coordinates were laid out more than ten years ago by Autechre, seems to be suffering from a limited range of ways to express itself: few paths, nearly all of them already well trodden, with no alternative between extreme repetitiveness and cross-pollination with more distant territories.

The results aren't exactly reassuring, whether at Warp or at Morr. Leaving Booth and Brown to their world, ever more folded in on itself (last year's off-putting and unsuccessful "Untitled"), even more recent standard-bearers of high quality show clear difficulty evolving their formula (I'm thinking of the divisive latest Boards Of Canada and the unrecognisable, and to my mind dreadful, latest Lali Puna). Even Isan (something of a link between the two labels), who may not be a top-tier name but had shown good qualities in the past, betrayed signs of crisis on what was their last effort, "Meet Next Life" (2004).

The Scottish duo (Antony Ryan and Robin Saville) realized full well they were holding rather few cards, and for their new "Plans Drawn in Pencil" they played it clever. A step back and a retreat into their own world, to craft a record deliberately out of time, one that sums up a scene on the verge of collapse (or already past it). A move that smacks of a post-mortem, and one that's justified as a summarizing approach. In practice, the 2006 incarnation of Isan chisel out thirteen melodic watercolours, strictly pastel-toned and entirely instrumental, blending, within the most accessible Morr-style mix, touches of Autechre and ambient music. As if to say: this was and is our music, this is what we know how to do and what we want to do.

The result stands to Autechre as Van Pelt once stood to Slint. Except that "Sultans of Sentiments" managed to be a classic well past its due time, while "Plans Drawn in Pencil" doesn't, sounding instead more like an epitaph - albeit one written with class. Beyond that quality, which shines through brilliantly in the care taken with the sound, Isan still have a few good melodies up their sleeve. Witness the playful, pastoral pulses of "Look and Yes" and the keyboard motifs that chime rubbery in "Yttrium" and far more humanly in "Five to Four, Ten to Eleven". And above all, the genuinely lovely line traced by the languid, unwinding synths of "Cinnabar" (the best track on the record), laid over chirping little beats.

On the other hand, repetitiveness acts as something of a trademark for the record, without managing to sublimate itself - quite the opposite, in fact, falling instead into blatant self-quotation, as with "Ruined Feathers", which sounds like a slowed-down version of the not-much-earlier "Corundum". And when the slow passages aren't calibrated just right, they make the record sluggish, even wearying, as on "Roadrunner", an introverted landscape where the piano notes drag along slow, too slow, building to an exhausting crescendo.

The flaws are certainly there, then, yet at the same time there are moments when they're forgotten. Like when you stumble upon the trance-like effect of "Immoral Architecture", pure ambient with striking impact, or the evocative sweetness of "Seven Mile Marker". So it turns out the glass is as much full as it is empty. Isan have reached the twilight of their career, it's true. But they've served up a spread of sweets in memory of the good old days. Maybe there's no room left, and maybe not all of them were good, but it's hard to deny that a few still manage to delight.