Rest

Rest is a prickly, slippery, strange beast, an album of house music that’s shaken loose of its foundations. The first album by Isolée, aka German producer Rajko Müller, after a string of excellent, unpredictable singles, it’s full of woozy synths, stinging arpeggios, loaded with phrases and vamps that feel like they’re detuned and warped as they’re being played, wrinkled from the humidity. The music here crinkles like cellophane and breaks like candy glass; on songs like “Keep On Dancin’,” strangely unemotional voices make declamatory statements at odds with the brittleness of the sound. In the middle of it all, the strange electro-bossa sway of “Beau Mot Plage,” Isolée’s unexpected hit single, a lilting, beachside dreamscape.