Wedding Bells

Sure he's remixed and handled production work for Ludacris, 2 Chainz, Lana Del Rey, and other chart climbers, but on his Wedding Bells EP, Norwegian producer Magnus August Høiberg, aka Cashmere Cat, offers a surprisingly subdued and attractively lazy batch of rainy-day EDM. Don't get it twisted, as this cloudy stuff sits better with music from the "indie" section than something like Deadmau5 or Swedish House Mafia, and yet all the tinkling and drifting found on opening track "With Me" is broken up by a bona fide dubstep bass drop, even if this bass drop crackles with the sound of glitch and lands its punch in a much softer than usual wubba, wubba. If deconstructing pop is his thing, then the title cut is the sound of R&B lying in a million little pieces on some downtown loft floor, while "Rice Rain" borrows R. Kelly's beloved rain drop sound to muddle up a melody somewhere between Tin Pan Alley and Yellow Magic Orchestra. While four tracks and done makes this more of a diversion than a full-on trip, hanging with Cashmere Cat's broken and cuddly brand of pop is a quirky pleasure. If the seats at brunch are all taken by indie kids and laid-back electronica fans, Wedding Bells is a suitable soundtrack.