II

"Epic" has always been the watchword for Norwegian prog-dance producers Hans-Peter Lindstrom and Prins Thomas -- separately and together. Just a year before II, their second album together, Lindstrom on his own released Where You Go I Go Too, which stretched three cuts across 55 minutes; the duo's 2007 Reinterpretations disc of remixes of their self-titled 2005 debut ran one cut ("Nummer Fire En") up to the 21-minute mark. Even in dance music circles where ten-minute tracks are commonplace, that's stretching it. But the tracks on II -- the shortest is six and a quarter minutes; the longest, 13:13 -- feel like discrete entities that seldom seem to take up as much space as they actually do. That isn't to say Lindstrom and Thomas aren't plenty indulgent: the slow guitar buildup of "Gudene Vet + Snutt" could have been taken from the warm-up exercises of any number of post-Dead jam bands, while the skittering drum rolls and cascading synthesizers that climax "Note I Love You + 100" might have escaped a pre-Miami Vice Jan Hammer session. But what's more evident than ever on II is how casual-sounding the two can make even a track such as the steady-building piano-centered electro-bolero of "For Ett Slikk Og Ingenting," or the endlessly playful "Skal Vi Prove Na?," a lovely pileup of thumb piano, shuffling hi-hats, thunking bass, chunky percussion, and woozy organ that spins like a top and lazes like a sunbather both at once. For all its widescreen ambition, II feels admirably lived in. ~ Michaelangelo Matos