Schema. Schema.

Musical duets rarely live up to hopes and expectations. Artists usually spend their time just exchanging verses, and never really try to blend their styles. Schema, on the other hand, are almost exactly like what you would want a cross between Hovercraft and Stereolab to sound like.

Hovercraft's afterburner equipped guitars tone down the epic roar in favor of heavy dub (check out the cosmically echoed event horizon that is We Think We're Sane) and a post rock take on Neu! (waves of muted, space-dust feedback, relentless, looped rhythms, and Mary's spacy keyboard bloops). Like a pair of communicating vessels, the album starts out heavy-on-the-Hovercraft/light-on-the-Stereolab with a progressive mixing of styles. Unde builds to Hovercraft's usual racing down a windtunnel trajectory with Mary moaning and murmuring over the top. They find their level in Echolalia...Curvilinear, the sprawling centerpiece, then tilt more towards Stereolab's old school motorik pop on Far from Where We Began and Getting Smart.

Sadly, Mary was killed in a bicycle accident, and Hovercraft disbaned soon after. There had been talk of another album and a tour, but this is all we'll be left with. Not a bad epitaph.

Schema