Coke Weed X, Coke Weed X (review)

Coke Weed X
(Range Life Records)

The phrase Coke Weed X sounds like something a drug dealer mutters to passers-by outside a Bassnectar show. So it makes a certain amount of sense that this self-titled debut — from brothers Brian and Brendan Costello, who also play drums and guitar, respectively, in Lawrence folk-rock act Fourth of July — is heavy on electronic tones and probably would sound marvelous on any of those substances. But Coke Weed X isn’t a pulsing, build-and-release electronic record. It’s more like something Warp Records would put out: ambient and faded, with low-impact crests and slides. The unifying quality here is the smart combination of blissed-out post-rock guitar lines, nodding grooves and tasteful samples. (Retro soul is cut into tracks like “Sand Pit” and “Bearcat,” and “Gold Linked Chain” echoes like a 1950s amusement park.) The shorthand would be “Boards of Canada meets Six Parts Seven,” though I prefer to think of it as soundtrack music to a stoned summer amble down, say, Mass Street.