"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.