Alias and Tarsier

"5 Year Eve," the centerpiece of the collaboration between California's Anticon beatsmith Alias and New York chanteuse Rona "Tarsier" Rapadas, features a string section gliding over crunchy, oddly patterned beats while a female voice waxes raspy about half-decades. And so Brookland/Oaklyn reinforces that hip-hop-inflected IDM beats paired with the intimacy of singer-songwriterdom is no longer a breathtaking combination. Brookland/Oaklyn is the picture of postexperimental electronic music — at times just a handful of sixteenth notes separates it from Dido territory. Alias and Tarsier recorded Brookland/Oaklyn on opposite coasts, but there's no disconnected tension to relish — if anything, they fit too well together, and the result is a collaboration that's woefully tried and true.

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