Euglossine - (2019) Coriolis CS

 

 Hausu Mountain ‎– HAUSMO 83 

Tristan Whitehill is a Gainesville, Florida-based musician and visual artist who runs the adventurous, playful netlabel Squiggle Dot and has released over a dozen albums and EPs as Euglossine. Having refined his sound from his crunchier, more lo-fi early work, Euglossine's first Hausu Mountain release is a peaceful, trippy mélange of fusion jazz and smooth funk, as well as the knotty intricacies of IDM and prog rock. Trained in jazz and classical music, Whitehill's virtuosity is obvious, and his compositions are richly detailed, yet they're so fluid that it can be easy to overlook their complexity. With prior releases on labels like Beer on the Rug and Orange Milk, Euglossine has fallen into the orbit of the vaporwave scene, but the project's work seems far more sincere than most of the bedroom-dwelling laptop postmodernists slowing down samples of Weather Channel smooth jazz and hiding behind memes. The drum machines are a bit plastic-sounding, but the synth textures and especially the guitars are much warmer and more vivid, and tracks like "Eternal Mouse" have pleasing melodies reminiscent of Mike Paradinas at his prime. "Cloud Bop" is a feathery shot of future-shocked electro, and the peppy "Zig Zag" injects some skronky sax, like John Zorn trapped in an elevator. Both relaxing and stimulating, Coriolis is Euglossine's smoothest ride yet.