Chrome Wings’ New Lands LP shows the duo’s pop sensibilities refracted through aquatic haze and liquid texture, advancing beyond a lo-fi aesthetic into new terrain defined by marina trenches and echolocation. While not departing from their tradition of creating dense, electronically indebted grooves, on this album Chrome Wings take the listener in a wholly accessible quest for a figurative Lost City. The abstract pattern on the cover harkens the fish-eye POV which refracts the pop sensibilities on New Lands, signifying a proverbial plunge into this trans-dimensional frame of mind and genre. The title track is an appropriate introduction to the ebulliantly rhythmic pulse which informs the album, where Chrome Wings guide the listener through a familiar, yet wholly alien landscape, propelled along by a dubby baseline. This self-described brand of dub-pop allows the gurgling synths to come up for air and symbiotically co-exist within the rhythmic consistency of each song. "Sky Mirage" could be the soundtrack to accompany the future discovery of Atlantis, triumphant in its progression towards an inevitable epiphany of decaying architecture framed by a horizon of underwater light. Instead of detracting from Chrome Wings’ pop ethos, the viscous effects filtered through each synthesizer, guitar, drum machine and vocal track synchronize into a symbiotic ecorhythm that gradually acculturates the listener to the depths of this band’s progression and talent in creating such a melodic and evocative soundscape. – Wyatt Schaffner
