Combining the talents behind Broadcast and the Focus Group, Children of Alice is an exciting prospect, and a poignant one. The former group's James Cargill and Roj Stevens joined forces with the latter group's Julian House to celebrate and continue the legacy of Broadcast, which only grew after Trish Keenan's untimely death in 2011 at age 42. For their self-titled debut, Children of Alice took inspiration from Keenan's lifelong love of Alice in Wonderland, and their spellbinding skill at juxtaposing and layering sounds into something far greater than the sum of their parts remains. Children of Alice sounds like bewitching field recordings of a world through the looking glass, or library music -- if that library were full of spell books and fairy tales. The trio gives free rein to the unearthly sounds that decorated the margins of Broadcast's pop songs, adding to the air of spooky anticipation on tracks like "The Harbinger of Spring." The only previously released song on Children of Alice, it feels more like 20 one-minute vignettes than a single composition; as it flits from cuckoo clocks to music boxes to giggling children and ritualistic flutes and drums, it spends just enough time with each to create a mood of tantalizing mystery. Even though Children of Alice closely resembles Broadcast's final album, Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age, listeners expecting a linear progression from Cargill and Stevens' previous band might be baffled at first. The album's lack of anything close to recognizable songs -- which feels like another admission of Keenan's irreplaceability -- could be intimidating if each track weren't so charming from one moment to the next. Liberated from vocals, choruses, and verses, Children of Alice conjure bursts of ultra-psychedelic imagery that evoke the season of spring as well springlike mechanisms, whether on the sprightly mischief of "Rite of the Maypole -- An Unruly Procession" or "Invocation of a Midsummer Reverie," which hovers somewhere between erotic, mystical, and playful. Throughout the album, Children of Alice treat this in-between state as a place of growth, especially on "The Liminal Space," a gently unsettled study in reflective tones and bustling percussion that could soundtrack the journey from caterpillar to butterfly. Keeping up with Children of Alice's quicksilver changes and hypnotic passages requires listeners' full attention, but it's well worth it -- these ever-transforming soundworlds honor the magic that Broadcast tapped into with Keenan while suggesting an equally fascinating way forward. ~ Heather Phares, Rovi

1		The Harbinger of Spring
2		Rite of the Maypole - An Unruly Procession
3		Invocation of a Midsummer Reverie
4		The Liminal Space

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