AvantRoots Vinyl & CDs

Review: Braulio Lam's latest record is a unique outing, spanning pensive ambient dub and trip-hop moods, and cherrying them with an added visual element in the form of a photography insert. Born on the border region of San Diego and Tijuana, Lam's repertoire works in an expressly brooding sound that threshes its inspirations from the close but separate apposition of these two cities. The sense of a polemic being is a central theme of Lam's work; this is not only evident in his practice, which drifts back and forth between music production and photography, but also in the sonic content of Close Up itself, which drifts between depth-scouring electronica and Pacific folk in quick step, revealing them to be dialectically adjoined. Our favourites here have to be 'Buena Vista Social Dub', a crystalline immersion in dub and vocal etherics, and 'Mirror', and 'Monika', which lends a seething tape hue to a slowly moving slice of Latin blues.