Troth - The Limits Of A Light Touch LP

The Limits of a Light Touch finds Troth approaching a kind of sideways pop music, perhaps more directly than ever before.
This is communicated through a refined musical language that blends ambient-pop, blurry trip hop slows and art-rock experimentalism. 

This is the first of Troth’s releases to consciously welcome external influence into their songwriting. Not with the considered intention of trying to bottle an ephemeral zeitgeist, but rather to co-habitate with Spirits that resonate personally.

The album is likely somewhat influenced by Troth’s recent run as NTS residents and occasional Early Bird show hosts. A return to active digging and deeper engagement with sounds of the outside world has opened their own ears to what their music can be.

This process of radio programming has involved a (re)engagement of listening to music popular during their teenage years. Not for any kind of nostalgia-laden flight from the present or a cyclical trend fixation, but something of a reappraisal of these artists and looking at them fresh (or for the first time), with 20 years in the rear view.

The themes and influences of Troth's 5 previous LP’s (6 if you count 2023’s Idle Easel EP) are intrinsic to their DNA and still clearly present here; the influence and immersion in environment, a constantly evolving dialogue with each other and a strong commitment to sustaining a vital global DIY community.

TLOALT commenced with the quick and natural creation of In Essence. Possibly the most straight-ahead pop song on the album, it was crafted in the midst of profound personal challenges, the process of losing a loved one. Found Ring and Knotwork blur elements of Besseny and Bowman's other project, the trio Th Blisks (with Yuta Matsumura) with a greater appreciation of leftfield UK pop from 2009 ~onwards~. 

In Burrows, Troth absorb elements from Animal Collective & Vashti Bunyan’s collaborative Prospect Hummer, melding ethereal folk pop with the outer limits approach of Paavoharju and the general looseness of the Fonal sound. This same pagan ritual energy is carried into Incanta, but realised in clearer ecstasy through manually played electronics, keeping everything comfortably wonked and off-grid 

While perhaps not immediately evident, the influence of Broken Social Scene’s You Forgot It In People carries into the loose, uninhibited takes on indie-adjacent art pop in Shaking Light, She Sees Stars and Foggy Motion.

Later, a darker, dubbed experimentalism is channeled, with ample aid from UK mate, The Dengie Hundred, on Two Urns Mark The Way. A kind of exquisite corpse of a song, reverse (re)engineered from an unreleased track from Troth's first album, wherein none of its past is longer extant. –Dearest Life