Bedroom Community

It's been more than a decade since Moby reinvented vintage field recordings as space-age nightclub blues. Sam Amidon works similarly quirky alchemy here, reinventing public-domain songs (plus one modern-day ringer) as rustic mood music for watching distant super-novas explode. But the results have none of the musty aftertaste such a description implies, contrasting pretty sounds with violent lyrical undercurrents. The one contemporary song, R. Kelly's "Relief," fits perfectly alongside oldies from the Georgia Sea Island Singers, even sounding a prayerful note.