Rain Affair

The atmospheres that Yimino evokes are nebulous yet weighty, and Amanda Zamolo's vocal over it is sunlight peering through the sparse cloud cover.

Now, I'm not a particularly big fan of the rain. But - much like rain itself - whether Rain Affair wants to settle upon the ambient and profound, or the snappy and spirited, it cannot decide. Across its tracklist, the album slips breezily between the two, with little more than a stream of wind or the rise of a synth-pad current needed to mark its flow, and Zamolo to mark its rhythm. Of course, the drums do well for the latter, too, in cuts like "Trouser Lips" or "Ocean", in which Yimino offers consistent drum beats that feel satisfyingly mixed and anchor the tracks well; meanwhile, Zamolo's vocals take the reins a little more on the title track "Rain Affair", which, despite its less predictable flow, has an uncanny infectiousness to it (thanks to Zamolo). There are also cuts where both sources of rhythm are stripped back - "Feort", midway through the album, lets go of the ground and floats in drumless, vocal-less tranquility, its comforting beauty a blanket over the tracks before and after it; the finale, "Rec", is vocal-less too, and its percussion is heavily muffled, with a hypnotic yearning to it, over the almost eight minutes it runs for.

It's a well-placed reflection of a peaceful mind, even with the cliché of weather as its brand. In truth, though, Rain Affair is a tasteful user of that cliché. The soundscapes are bathed in light downpours, or washed against the sidewalk, but Yimino's production maintains a sense of detachment, creating a peaceful spaciousness away from the weather motif - as if shielding it from the weather's fickle and temporary nature - and the vocal from Zamolo only enhances this, breathy and transient. The shorter tracklist also lends itself to this transient quality, though the album remains, satisfyingly, long enough in runtime to be contemplative.

Rain Affair is not necessarily an album that asserts itself. This can cause it to struggle at times - though it is rare that the album feels flat at any point, it can feel dragged-out and perhaps repetitive in places - but the mood of the album is supported well. Emotionally, it is not a record which should be assertive, and the artists understand this well. Rain Affair does not stride, but rather it lingers, and ambles forward. Any sonic impact that is felt is through a songwriting climax or a low-strung bassline behind the curtain, but most of it is absorbed into the padded atmospheres and springy rhythms.

Often, downtempo/chillout albums feel simultaneously rather easy to make immersive (perhaps, for some, cheapening them), and rather difficult to make compelling - particularly those with a pop-leaning sensibility. Though Rain Affair isn't free from these by any means, its appeal to strong songwriting and clarity of production, and a clean blending of the vocal and the electronics underneath, gives it a certain confident edge that pulls it forward, even under the weather-borne haze of the more ambient cuts.

Listen on Spotify here.