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Pretty sure it's the Abyssinians' "Declaration of Rights" that is nanosampled on this--and then sliced, stacked, slowed waaay down, and/or otherwise effected into a slippery bit of dubscape. It's a notable shift from the Urick showcased on last year's Thrill Jockey debut Husbands. The ambient pieces on that were in some part successful because of their implicit acknowledgement/understanding of their very laptopness--as in, these are sounds coming from a small electronic box, so why pretend otherwise? It kept not only the palette of sounds within a certain boundary, but the ideas as well. And it seemed to expand the idea of what, exactly, laptop ambient music could be, using its own bounds/"claustrophobia" to its advantage. Here, Urick uses not only very human samples but actual rhythm as well, however shuffling and elastic. It works. The way the "fussing and fighting" sample pans around like it's a gas looking to escape containment, the slow rotations and undulations of the soundscape itself--"Fussing and Fighting" is the sound of a ghost in the machine, in the most literal way.

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