Oliver Coates - Sidestepped (2020)

Hot on the heels of "skins n slime" arrives a skeletal 30-minute flutter of dimly-lit piano flourishes and surprisingly sparse stringwork from virtuoso Thom Yorke and Mica Levi collaborator Oliver Coates.

Since Oliver Coates was branded a musical genius while he was breaking test score records at the Royal Academy of Music, he's been doing everything he can to subvert the expectation of what a virtuoso cellist can and can't do. As obsessed with UK garage and tweaky IDM as he is with classical music, he's attempted over a slew of albums to fashion the cello into new forms, recreating familiar sounds or simply crafting new ones. With October's "skins n slime" he took this process even further, but with "Sidestepped" there's a far more delicate restraint to his approach.

Bringing to mind the otherworldly soundtrack work of Coates' sometime collaborator Mica Levi, "Sidestepped" pairs Coates' eerie cello tones with sparse, muted piano. Over half an hour it builds slowly and assuredly, breezily attracting dust and noise until it erupts in a crescendo of Jefre Cantu-Ledesma-style power ambient fuzz. Yum.