Moon Diagrams' (Deerhunter's Moses Archuleta) new mini-LP, feat. radiant reworks from Shigeto, Angel Deradoorian, and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Trappy Bats was largely recorded in a single night as a means to process the intense intersection of Archuleta's social, political, and personal hysteria. Having been arrested for an unknown, missed court date, Archuleta spent 24 hours in a holding cell, opening ample time to reflect on his life, the current state of the nation (the jail televisions were showing a constant feed of the then-active Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville), and the other inmates stuck inside the containment center. Upon being released the next day, Archuleta found himself in a bout of insomnia and feeling the need to process everything through music. Here, Archuleta is in his freest state, channeling the turmoil and confusion he was experiencing into an unencumbered fit of creativity. It's pure, unadulterated escapism with an even more callous palette of sounds than before. "Trappy Bats" could be the sonic spawn of Not Waving and Terrence Dixon, with a slow and snarling mix of percussive clatter and washes of orchestral tones that unravel along it's 12-minute runtime. Shigeto implodes the track into a kaleidoscope of viscerally giddy dance music. "Wipeout" is a slow-motion waltz of dusty piano and clattering percussion loops that cooly stumble along with the woozy, nocturnal flare of the Caretaker or Philip Jeck. The haunted reverie ventures even deeper with an electrified ambient re-imagination by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. "Daisychain" goes almost completely off the grid, offering up a sweetly submerged slab of constantly evolving murkiness in the vain of Demdike Stare or a dosed Andy Stott. The sweet shuffle levitates into the air with a celestial re-interpretation by sonic visionary Angel Deradoorian. The end result is an extended traipse of Saturday evening fever-dream techno, Sunday morning cigarette jazz-pop, and every blank-thought in between.
