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Music

Plaster Cast Gets By With Some Help from Foxes in Fiction and Other Friends on 'Permanence'

Listen to the Los Angeles producer's new EP in advance of its March 4 release.
Photo courtesy of the artist

Los Angeles producer/songwriter Alex Rajabi expresses some discomfort with calling the woozy atmospheres he conjures as Plaster Cast a "solo project." In a statement emailed to THUMP, he describes the project existing somewhere between the image of a guy tinkering alone in a bedroom and a traditional band environment, or as he puts it: "if having a band is like a marriage, then Plaster Cast is an open relationship, or an orgy with friends."

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Although that description might suggest that Plaster Cast's collaborations could be messy or emotionally fraught, a new EP called Permanence out tomorrow on experimental pop purveyors, Zoom Lens, feels focused, varied, and intimate. Like Rajabi suggests, however, the rotating cast of players on the release gives a sense of beautiful transience to the drifting beats. Brooklyn dream pop auteur Foxes in Fiction lends a hand on the EP's standout "Undecided," which plays like a digitalist reinvention of Cocteau Twins' most cavernous and cloistered work.

Elsewhere Cameron Wilson, who originally with Rajabi on last year's "Sunless" which reappears here, and his sister Michaela contribute their own vocals to instrumentals both twitchy and subdued at alternate turns. Many other producers attempt to conjure a similar balance of mystery and placidity, but by allowing collaborators a hand in his productions, he's able to give Permanence's vaporous productions a craggy depth beyond many of his peers.

Listen here, and if you're in New York, catch Rajabi live tomorrow night at Babycastles alongside Foxes in Fiction and Meishi Smile, among others.