Ando Laj – Dog Insight

The excellently titled Dog Insight provides nine tracks of shimmering electronic business from Ando Laj, the pseudonym of Toronto’s Andy Lajeunesse, a producer who seemingly favours the enigmatic and uncategorizable. It’s perhaps to Lajeunesse’s credit that it’s not immediately obvious where Dog Insight fits in right now, certainly far too sedate to be club-ready ala UMFANG, B. Dillon, Karen Gwyer et al, but equally nowhere near as conceptually tricksy and obtuse as much of the downtempo electronic/ambient noise coming from the West Mineral + adjacent camps. There’s an obvious North American sensibility here in how synth-heavy these compositions are, post- vapour/chill-wave perhaps in how it conjures a weird fog of morose atmosphere, though it’s far better produced than that comparison suggests (and nowhere near as tacky). Murky in ways that recall some of the recent Trilogy Tapes output (particularly on heavily mechanised opener ,Aal Tn), Dog Insight is nonetheless suffused with an isolationist spirit, subject to its own whims as it shifts into shapes both moody and mesmerising. TBH i picked this one up not expecting much, but have found it a real hypnotic draw, growing with each listen. Well worth an investigation.