Pitchfork Media reviewed Com Lag today, and gave it a not-so-hot 4/10.
An excerpt of the review-
Gingerly, you rocked the disc back and forth to wrest it from its clear tray, trembling, breathless, in the event that, for the first time in recorded history, the CD’s plastic center would pop out on your index finger, the most unholy wedding band imaginable. After dust-blasting your player with compressed air, you slowly set Com Lag into the drawer on a perfect horizontal plane, ensuring zero impact. Positioning yourself at the triangulated stereo center of your equidistant speakers, you hear…
*FFFFFFFFFFFFFT*
*SSSSSSSSSSSHHHKKKKK*
I can see the look on your face, and it is priceless.
True to published reports, there’s an appalling digital glitch on Com Lag, and as of press time, EMI Toshiba’s position is that they will not recall this flawed limited edition EP. Our rating disregards the failing, since the butchered track in question– Four Tet’s otherwise palatable downtempo remix of “Scatterbrain”– is available on the UK “2 + 2 = 5” single, and since the newly released Australian version of Com Lag is said to rectify the situation. But you can’t ignore the humor behind 10,000 people shelling out $20 for what’s basically a bad burn.
Com Lag splits down the middle, a ten-track collection of demos, remixes and DSP experiments often less deserving of running time than meager Amnesiac leftovers like “Fast Track” and “Trans-Atlantic Drawl”. Oddly, one of that era’s most ornate B-sides, “Fog”, is a highlight here, reprised in solo piano form for a television audience as per Yorke’s justly lauded, widely booted sets for the 2002 Bridge School Benefit. Simplicity is this EP’s virtue, as its pairing of “Fog” with a one-track, acoustic recording of “Gagging Order” make for Com Lag’s most valuable five minutes.
Read the review in full here.
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