Album Review: Moon and Pollution - The Box Borealis

Recently at the offices of the Southern Minnesota Scene magazine, my editor was sent a large box of promo CDs to myriad Minnesota based artists. He wandered out to where my desk is and presented it to me, wondering if I wanted any of them. He’s fairly confident that they were sent to us with the implication that we’d review them, or give these artists some kind of publicity, or something.

Among them was the debut release from the post-trip hop duo Moon and Pollution, The Box Borealis, which came out in January, and our music writer Sarah actually did review it for the magazine, in June (late to the party, like I am) and was a little “eh” about the whole thing.

I didn’t get to be an award winning blogger by writing about stuff 10 months after its released, however, I did take the copy of The Box Borealis and listened to it in the car the next day—and I was moved enough by it to want to break my own rule about only writing about recent things and put something together about it.

One of the reasons I was so drawn to it, almost instantly, is because of how similar it is to one of my favorite new-ish artists, Sister Crayon, who released their excellent sophomore album in June.

Moon and Pollution have a little less “otherworldly howling” than Sister Crayon, and rely a lot more on gadgets, technology, and overall noisy fuckery—and it works in their favor. The duo is truly trip-hop for our modern times. Obviously inspired by the work of the genre forbearers like Portishead and early Massive Attack, Moon and Pollution strip away the jazz influence of Portishead and focus more on the hip-hop beats while pushing forward with a very modern, and very very dark sound. To say The Box Borealis  is a claustrophobic affair is a vast understatement.

But it isn’t all cavernous darkness. The duo—Molly Dean and Graham O’Brien—eventually find a groove (albeit an ominous one) on some tracks, like the throbbing slow jam, aptly titled “Darkroom Double,” then later on the slithering and awkwardly titled “Solace Sandwich.”

It slithers even more, later on, with the anthemic "I Didn't Look," a short meditation built around a powerful hook.

This kind of “sound” is obviously nothing new. It’s not the kind of thing that Marvin Berry would call up his cousin Chuck to tell him about. An outfit like Sister Crayon are the clear front runners for the heirs to the trip-hop throne, and the seemingly defunct husband/wife duo ExitMusic’s brief run also, at one point, showed promise in the “wounded sounding electronic music” sub genre.

For something so claustrophobic and dark, Moon and Pollution have a gigantic sound, and they’ve made a restless and relentless debut album. It may not be the kind of record that I’m revisiting 10 months from now, but I will say that if you’ve ever nodded your head along to the beat of Dummy or Protection, then it’s worth your time—I mean, the fact that I broke my own rule to review it should say enough as is. 

The Box Borealis is out NOW, via F.I.X.