Todd Osborn (no e), the man behind 2008’s Osborne, defines nerd super-producer. An ex-record store owner who flies and repairs planes, owns an electron microscope, and wrote the software he used to make his album, Todd is one of the small group of people who excel at both designing circuits and making music. February’s self titled release on Spectral Sound offers proof of this in the form of an album full of songs unlike most other contemporary house music. It sounds like a throwback to the electronic dance music as it was first put together by the master architects of the 80’s: producers like Larry Heard (Mr. Fingers) and Juan Atkins (Model 500, Rhythm is Rhythm) worked out of Detroit and Chicago as house music (and in Detroit, “techno”) started to push itself away from the Italo-Disco that, in the clubs where it was pioneered, had dominated the turntables for years before it. Moving away from Italo’s lush disco sound, the work of these producers asserted the sensibility of harder beats and mechanically precise repetition that would come to define house music. The instruments Todd draws from to build the album (whether actual models from this era or imitations) are certainly a nod to the past, but in a way that makes it feel less slick and more real. Their sounds are uncomplicated and have the characteristic warmth of analog synthesizers.

The album’s sound is often comparable to music released through the label DFA, whose releases tend to display a similar preoccupation with proto-edm kitsch but with more disco flair. Another close comparison is the work of Morgan Geist, whose music displays a similar tendency towards simple arrangements and vintage sounds. In comparison to a lot of this work, however, Osborne uses its retro drum-machine flavor to package something a little less esoteric and a little more straightforward. The focus on melody and harmony is not as unusual in electronic music as some DJ sets might make it seem, but here, as in Geist’s “Metro Area 4,” the simplicity of the pieces often foreground their arrangements in a way that renders the album more interesting in your living room than on a dance floor. It pushes into the emotional territory you explore more by staring out of train windows on the way home from work than being up all night in a warehouse, something a little melancholy in ways that pumping acid house bass-lines never are. While a few of the tracks would make vague sense playing at a party, it’s the ways that they wouldn’t that makes the album really interesting. It’s a kind of music for all the moments you spend between things and lost in thought–-it is a cool, somber, and thoughtful album in a really human and honest way. The album’s only low point is the track “Our Definition of a Breakdown;” sadly the kitch factor doesn’t save a track built around someone announcing “the scratch beat” and “the clap beat.” But other than that, Osborne really shines, and it’s worth your time to give it a listen.