Run_Return's Debut CD for n5MD references those blurry lines between genres. Somewhere in this washed out space, Future-Jazz, Experimental Electronica, and Recovery Rock all work together to create a focused vision of the future. Flying cars, moving sidewalks, and radio transitions from the moon where the lunar jockey spins flawless mixes of Telefon Tel Aviv, Tortoise, and Miles Davis. Take (the) Metro North and see what we all have to look forward to.

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Run_Return's dance club-worthy post-rock vacillates between textured electro-nocturnes and a sitcom theme triumphalism as life-affirming as Beethoven's Fifth. The Oakland trio trades off duties on all instruments: vibraphone, retro keyboards and agile drumming, while the album adds phlanged banjo and skittering guitar. There's an odd tendency here to pair instruments with their synthetic counterparts, cellos against keyboard strings, handclaps against synth handclaps, and most admirably in the cut-up interplay between programmed beats and live drumming -- trading licks within a single rhythm or a live drum break appearing, deux ex machina, in the middle of a drum machine backed song. textura

A remarkable 'instrumental rock' release that more than delivers on the promise of Run_Return's 7-inch single Animals Are Beautiful People, the Oakland trio's Metro North deftly merges tight drum programming, squelchy synths, and electronic textures with guitars, vibes, bass, and drums in eighteen future-jazz tracks. The group's sound ranges widely, with songs encompassing post-rock, dub, jazz, funk, and melodic electronica, sometimes within the span of a single song. "Remote Sensing" exemplifies the music's mercurial character, with mechano synth patterns surreptitiously morphing into acoustic guitar and then banjo picking. Similarly, "Our Pleasure to Serve You" commingles radical edits and drum programming with electric piano and acoustic drums before vanishing in a free-form haze of animal noise at its close.

What prevents the music from being crippled by such intricacy is the sheer exuberance of the group's attack, with consistently inventive drumming a particularly strong element. There's incessant instrumental exploration—synths flutter, guitars skitter, vibes ping, electronics babble—, none of which would matter much if the compositions themselves weren't distinguished. Check out the simple yet gorgeous theme in "Louis James Corrigan," for example, where the song's melancholy elegance is deepened by Aria Disalvio's cello. "Soothing Syrup" captivates too, with Meagan Geer's warm murmurs draped over hiccupping rhythms, as does the buoyant stroll of "Talking Balloon," And, reprised from the single, the lush melancholia of "Animals are Beautiful People" sounds just as satisfying in this context.

Not all of the material is bucolic. The strong opener "Aerospace Lanes" develops into a tempestuous episode of roiling drums, electronic effects, bass synths, and vibes, while "Weights and Measures" and "Loge Blue" burn and twitch. Faint echoes of other artists occasionally emerge: a dreamy Boards of Canada vibe bookends the title cut's flowing groove while the post-rock throwdown "Sea Plane" would do Tortoise proud. Ultimately, though, the group's sound is very much its own. Put simply, Metro North is a fabulously accomplished outing by group members Kevin Dineen, Tommy Fugelsang, and Raj Ojha, and one that impresses even more for being Run_Return's n5MD album debut. lost at sea

Metro North is the kind of record year-end lists were designed for, and I hate myself for having not discovered it earlier. Run_Return have it all: charisma, technical proficiency, an aversion of pigeonholes, a clear knack for applying that finishing gloss to their mixes, and that extra dimension that mere reviewer-babble eternally wastes itself upon. At this point, with most conclusive analysis on 2005 releases finished, Metro North may be the best record you never heard.

What separates Run_Return from the world's million-and-one IDM hopefuls is their aptitude for playing IDM. Metro North is not the aural offspring of some spotty teenager whose parents have just bought them Reason 3.0, but rather a focused digital impression derived from a series of jams between three young Americans; and it shows. Though it may orbit synthesizers, hence utilizing a modest degree of programming (which modern technology universally permits), it is fleshed out with vibes, live drums and guitars, and is conveyed with that raw musical integrity that cannot be sequenced or superficially bought into.

To strip Run_Return down is to reveal an indistinct blurring of genres. Their intergalactic swagger gazes into the future, showcasing the same jazzy swing that thrust Tortoise into the instrumental foreframe. Beyond their post-rock core shimmers an ode to the likes of Telefon Tel-Aviv and Pulseprogramming in the form of the microscopic blip and skitter patterns that line each mix.

Upon embarking on an ambitious 16 tracks, Run_Return seemingly don't shy away from a challenge, and with "Aerospace Lanes" they don't hang about either. The opening cut is a multi-pronged future-jazz assault, laced with vibes, subtle electronic beats, and anchored by the fattest bass synth this side of Fabric. "OKC dani" carries less weight, largely forming itself around a single melancholic violin track, whereas "Weights and Measures" sits at the lower end of the Run_Return frequency spectrum, tenderly switching between synth collisions and soporific noise clouds.

Metro North presents an example of those rare recordings that are so crisp and dense that they seem almost physically tangible. It is far-reaching, multi-dimensional, and manages to maintain and equilibrium between busy climatic peaks and moments of light hypnosis. Run_Return have articulated their designs for the future, and if Metro North is anything to go by, we can rest assured that a future in which Run_Return feature will transpire for the greater good. robotspeak

Lush, lush instrumental arrangements with equal parts acoustic and synthetic elements. Unabashed analog synthesizer basslines set the foundation for live vibraphone and drum kit explorations and layers upon layers of melody -- buckets of it, everywhere, so much that at times i wish things would thin out to just one or two elements. Still, it's a nice problem to have when a band is almost too good at making beautiful, intricate, compelling music. It's this 50 cent era of stripped-down, repetitive music that makes groups like Run_Return seem so out of the ordinary. This is much closer to super melodic-space jazz. Sprawling, non-formulaic, dense, beautiful music that falls somewhere between Four Tet, Tortoise and Boards of Canada. igloomag

Swirling together a healthy dose of the Compost-style fascination with re-invigorating late period Miles Davis with the vanguard rock instrumental landscapes rising out of Chicago and Montreal, Run_Return is the comprehensive efforts of Kevin Dineen, Tommy Fuselsang and Raj Ojha. For Metro-North, they program granular beat environments, layer warm synthesizer melodies over the top before picking up guitar, bass, drum kit and marimba (to start, they're not adverse to bringing in other instrumentation as needed to build their moody pieces) to fuse IDM and improvisational rock elements into something that is captivatingly organic and dense. It is the work of twelve done by the hands of three, a compression of sprawling prog epics into taut little jazz club numbers that are too carefully constructed to just be unrestrained musical chaos.

"Aerospace Lanes" unfolds like a Lionel Hampton collaboration with Boards of Canada, ripe with vibraphone and skittering beat programming; "Louis James Corrigan" swallows the downtempo vibe whole and we all go down to soft darkness of the whale belly where cellos sing a winsome melodic counterpoint to effusive synthesizers. "Weights and Measures" sizzles with drums and cinematic programming -- the rollicking tale of scientific measurements as transformed into an invigorating epic of robust keyboards and nimble percussion. "Loge Blue" is a demur expression of organic synthetics and marimba, insouciant keyboards dancing hand-in-hand with a tight hi-hat, rolling stick work and a smooth bass line.

Guest guitar work on "Our Pleasure To Serve You" fractures the warmth of Run_Return's typical sound (as if that can be said with a straight face in the first place) with a shuddering cry of jagged strings. Analog synths and the persistent click of the drum kit anchor the song in the warm meadowland of innocent IDM territory, but Andrew Seger's guitar alternates with the shuddering cry of its strings (complete with an echo of bird song which the song ultimately devolves into) or it rolls across the landscape like a pleasing breath of warm air. "Soothing Syrup" is a digital panacea (initially), a bubbling cocktail of programming, drum pads and cut-up vocals. Guitar and marimba sneak into the mix, an infestation which disturbs the virtual fabric of the song with a dollop of organic life. The song is transformed into a glistening array of bell tones, digitized notes which sound as if they are born of mallet and wood but have a sheen that seems too pristine to not be treated by DSP.

"Remote Sensing" is flush with synthesizer reverb and drum box echo, a warbling passage of subway trains that clicks and swooshes past, and trailing in its wake is a banjo melody that seems to be the source of the synthesizer echo (kind of a reversed time loop). The banjo fades into a clatter of percussion and marimba before being dissolved by a swelling burst of synthesizer. It's a song that seems backwards and inverted and yet unfolds just fine in your head. Title track "Metro North" lets out all the stops, a kitchen sink summation of all the tricks and progressions which have been hinted at in the previous sixteen tracks: a climactic flourish of electronics, jazz rhythms and synthesized melodies.

This is the underlying magic of Run_Return: it sounds so real-time, but (time and again) you hear elements which are digitally generated. There is a secret layer of computer trickery going on in the heart of Run_Return's organic jazz instrumentals, a 21st century love affair with the touch of a button and the pass of a filter. I'm not making note of this as if I have yanked back the curtain and revealed the knobs and dials of the wizard's booth, but rather to marvel at the complexity of their efforts. Run_Return have gone beyond such facile attempts of genre marking as "post" and "future" and are simply living in the 21st century -- the world of hand-made and machine-made -- and are making cyborg music. It is the groove of both our human hearts and the machine pulse of our culture. Very nice. urb

Blending lushly filed-out instrumental rock with electronic burps and hisses, run_return combines everything from electrified free jazz to aphex twin electronica. "Metro North" can serve as both background ambience and an attention-capturing melodic journey. Just over an hour long, metro north is an exhaustive listen that yields. melodick

Que donnerait l'alliance des instruments acoustiques avec les sons electro les plus synthétiques actuellement? C'est un peu la question que l'on pourrait se poser avant de connaître Run_Return. A l'écoute de ce 'Metro-North' on n'aura peut-être pas la réponse exacte mais au moins on aura eu un aperçu des possibiltés. 'Louis James Corrigan' est son violon larmoyant en est un excellent exemple. Il n'est pas si difficile de percevoir que les membres du groupe – puisqu'il s'agit ici d'un 'vrai' groupe et non pas d'un dj isolé – ont une sensibilité pop qu'ils aiment à persécuter et à triturer. 'Metro-North' est donc un album intriguant et déroutant mais fichtrement passionnant. Bien sûr, il faudra être ouvert aux expérimentations sonores du groupe mais je doute qu'on se procure un disque de ce label par hasard. Un léger défaut cependant: la durée de l'album. En effet, la densité de la musique étant telle, il n'est pas toujours aisé de venir à bout des 18 morceaux. Mais en plusieurs fois et avec un peu d'entrainement, on arrive à tout. Et ce qui pouvait au premier abord sembler légérement indigeste se révèle être un véritable plaisir gustatif. Rien que ça!

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