PolIçA + STARgAzE

Music For The long Emergency 8/10

Minneapolis quintet Poliça’s gothic electronica resembles a chromium-plated Portishead, and here the Berlin-based chamber orchestra stargaze – in an ongoing partnership that follows a 2016 steve Reich collaboration – don’t alter this usP. Instead stargaze use sparing woodwind and string flourishes to add emotional heft to the woozy, slo-mo soul of “Fake Like” or the industrial judders of “Cursed”. the moral centrepiece of the album appears to be “How Is this Happening”, a dumbstruck response to trump’s election victory, where vocalist Channy Leaneagh’s folksy mantra (“resisting him/resisting us”) is set against spectral strings and woodwind. Icily brilliant.