Ping Trace is one of the most forward-thinking acts I’ve come across. Comparisons beyond this single point are out of line, but they have that same quality that I love in the middle recordings of New Order: it’s distinctive enough that you know who made it from the first few notes, but the band will continually surprise you with how flexible their sound is.

Ping Trace isn’t the first group to treat electronic music with the hands-on approach of a traditional band – concerned as much with songs, with overall meaning, a depth of feeling and range of emotions beyond “c’mon get happy” that many frequently associate with House Music – but they may be the best of breed today.

Made up of two DJs (“Sven” Cleveland and Jeremy Golden) and vocalist Lynnae Rome, their music has a quality that’s at once broad and intimate – with rough electronic scrapes and kicks always brought back down by Rome’s lush, whisper of a voice. Nowhere is this more apparent than in “A Forest” – a song that, according to iTunes, I listened to 45 times prior to writing this review and will likely listen to twice as much in the coming days.

“A Forest” is a cover from The Cure, and despite owning the Cure’s entire discography in about four different media formats, it took the liner notes to point this out to me. Say what you will about the original and the rather mixed results successive performers have had in covering The Cure, but Ping Trace really makes this one their own. In fact, in a blind test, I found myself preferring the Radio Edit of the four mixes here, which is something that almost never happens. As with their previous Terraform releases (2010’s “How You Feel” and “We Are Human”), some might find this hard to classify – some including Juno and Terraform, for reasons best kept between themselves and their maker, classify it as “Progressive House”. It’s a small matter. Ping Trace is one of those acts whose music is destined to straddle, jump and obliterate the boundaries between genres.

[ – Review by Terry Matthew / May 2011 – ]

Available: Released worldwide on May 3, 2011; available digitally from Juno Downloadand the iTunes store.