An LP that’s snuck under the radar around here the last couple of weeks due to limited quantities, but I can’t help but want to highlight Troth’s latest full-length. Flaws In The Glass knocked us off our feet when it was released back in 2020 and Oak Corridor feels like both a continuation and a departure of that work.
A similar ethereal, new age-y vibe to their previous full length, but with even lusher low ends. At the same time there seems to be a turn towards a broad “song” structure in some of the album, with Amelia Besseny’s vocals higher in the mix and underpinned by drum machines and winding synth/keys melody. For fans of YL Hooi’s latest, but trading in the woozy post-club vibe for something more outdoors, or for those who like the 4AD catalogue but aren’t into the goth dress-ups. An album that maintains a weirdness that can’t necessarily be pinned down or pigeonholed.
-Mitch (Repressed Records)
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Oak Corridor is the second full-length album from Newcastle, Australian duo Troth (Amelia Besseny & Cooper Bowman). It follows 2020’s warmly received album, Flaws In The Glass (Altered States Tapes) and 2021’s Small Movements In Radiance mini-album (Not Not Fun). While the same themes and intentions remain, this time Troth channel their ambient experiments into an environ located somewhere closer to minimal-wave and synth-pop.
While Oak Corridor is their most ‘song-based’ album to date, it continues the respectful treatment of natural themes found in their previous releases, further tying in elements of balance, truth, justice, humility, strains of mysticism from varied origins and an opposition to the encroachment of ill-advised development surrounding them in Newcastle (and Australia more broadly). The album is a truly collaborative affair and offers something of a sound-diary of the two’s relationship. - Knekelhuis