End Times

New York DJ, visual artist, and musician Scott Mou debuted his long-running solo project Queens with first album End Times. Mou had already toured the U.S. as Queens and done multiple collaborations with Panda Bear under the moniker Jane by the time the woolen, dreamy textures of End Times arrived in 2013. Foggy clouds of looping guitar-based compositions weave in and out of Mou's airy vocals, sometimes a floating falsetto and other times a detached, watery presence beneath the hissy waves of sound. A far cry from the electronic sounds of his DJ sets, Queens encapsulates the alienated isolation of Jandek's early morning confusions and the vividly remembered lucid dream pop of Grouper, and hits on the same delicate balance of repetition and disruption of cycles that lies at the core of the best work by Durutti Column, Flying Saucer Attack, and Panda Bear. Cavernous tracks like "Here Comes the Snow" and "Yellow Pages" make emotionally enormous impressions even while barely announcing themselves coming or going. ~ Fred Thomas