L.A. Takedown

You don’t need to have been to Los Angeles to best experience L.A. Takedown’s latest album, II. It’s an album that’s evocative of a time and place, though it’s one that may or may not exist. The fact that it’s almost entirely instrumental (save for some lightly sprinkled vocoder in its final moments) doesn’t provide any concrete evidence. It’s an album length mystery, and one that’s worth the patience of letting it unfold.

Led by Los Angeles-based composer/multi-instrumentalist Aaron M. Olson, the seven-piece band’s follow-up to L.A. Takedown’s 2015 self-titled debut is the first release featuring the full band -– keyboardists Ryan Adlaf and Jonah Olson, guitarists Miles Wintner and Stephen Heath drummer Mose Wintner, and bassist Jessica Espeleta. "Composer" is not a loose term in this case –- Olson studied classical music history and theory at San Francisco State.

Full of perfectly slick guitars, heavy beds of synths and keys and crisp drums, II feels less like the work of a rock band, and more like the score to a night out in one of the West Coast’s foremost cities: a place where it seems permanently dusky and all the signs are neon. Effortless syncopation of guitars on tracks like “L.A. Blue” and “City of Glass” have the warmth of a Xanax buzz. Everything feels a little out of focus, the kisses are a little softer, and sleep feels imminent the minute the eye settles behind the eyelid. (It probably doesn’t hurt that the album cover is an illustration of a similar-looking pill between two fingers.)

Songs like “Night Skiing” feel like hero’s journeys -- driving percussion and synths give away to the album’s loosest shredding, eventually building to a climax that would get a nod of respect from the most ardent Van Halen devotees. Each song has a way of feeling like a mini symphony that fits perfectly in the whole of the album –- the most '80s dry-drum sound of “Bad Night at Black Beach” is even worthy of its place, even if it doesn’t feel much more like an extended interlude.

What L.A. Takedown have done with II is create a record that forces a listener to really feel. It’s imaginative, ambitious and in a weird way, a little ponderous. It feels like a place you can visit, look around and feel the breeze. Is it Los Angeles? Is it somewhere in the desert, or the sound of driving down an empty highway with the top down? That’s not entirely clear, and maybe it’s best not to think about it. It will take you somewhere new each time.

7.5 / 10 — Brendan Hilliard