Timeslips & Chimeras

Sydney quintet Tangents make music that defies easy shelving: performed live, without a laptop in sight, yet unmistakably electronic in its textures. Timeslips & Chimeras is their fourth album for New York’s Temporary Residence Ltd and their most confident statement yet—a twelve-track set that drifts between the hushed acoustic detail of ECM jazz and the unhurried sprawl of kosmische, as though the two traditions had been poured into the same vessel and left to settle.

Opening track Exaptation sets the record’s unhurried grammar, its saxophone and Rhodes figures circling a soft, live-drummed pulse before the band lock into a groove that feels discovered rather than imposed. Vessel follows in kind, the electronics swirled around the kit rather than replacing it, whilst Old Organs builds from a low, humming drone into something approaching momentum and Survival finds the quintet at their most direct, a motorik bass pulse anchoring the wandering horn lines. Throughout, the production is warm and close-miked, every creak and breath left in.

The long-form pieces are where the album does its best work. At eight minutes, Bylong is the centrepiece, its guitar and saxophone lines weaving around one another over a bass note that never quite resolves, whilst Debris pushes furthest into jazz—the rhythm section stretching time and letting the electronics fizz at the edges. Lilliputian is the most playful thing here, its stuttering, syncopated rhythm hinting at a funk the band wisely never fully commit to.

Ossicles offers the record’s most delicate passage, sparse piano and brushed drums recalling the quieter corners of the ECM catalogue, and Lost Track lives up to its name with a woozy, half-remembered quality. The title pair summarise the album’s twin poles: Timeslip is a hazy, dubbed-out drift, whilst Chimera is the most propulsive moment on the record, locked into a motorik groove with the saxophone riding on top. Closing track Wonder ends on a warmly hymnal note of sustained organ and long tones.

It would be easy for a record this unhurried to drift into the background, but Tangents’ refusal to let any single element dominate keeps Timeslips & Chimeras compelling across its sprawling runtime. This is music of texture rather than hooks, played with a live band’s instinct for tension and release. Four albums into this hybrid, it feels like the moment the idea finally crystallised.