White Rainbow (née Adam Forkner) recently tore through the autumn skies to drop this bomb, blowing away expectations, surpassing anything I could have anticipated after the already-excellent 2007 LP Prism of Eternal Now. Expanding on the warm, nebulous nature of his live jam constructions, New Clouds is an impossibly appropriate title for one of this year’s best records.
Transcendent, overwhelming, hypnotic bliss. Building layer upon layer of drones, stretched and echoed vocals, muted tribal percussion, and gorgeous synth swells, each track is a towering confection allowed room to naturally develop and breathe. The four tracks comprise an hourlong running time, every moment feeling palpably open and inviting. This album inspires and propels further listening, rather than demanding it. Songs begin focused on a singular element, be it delayed acoustic guitar strums or rubbery hand drumming, and evolve with such grace and intuitive logic that final assembly is nearly imperceptible. This music simply happens, while the conscious mind is busy absorbing the amorphous beauty like a pillow swallowing a blissful dreamer. Informed by a wide range of greats, from Terry Riley to Can at their most euphoric, Forkner has finally broken through to a plane where his art exists on its own terms, immaterial of time or place. This album raises hypnagogic exploration to new heights.
[pick this brand new album up at boomkat or amazon, or directly from kranky, a label fully deserving of your support]
Bows were born after the demise of brilliant post-rock pioneers Long Fin Killie, by lead guitarist and singer Luke Sutherland. A more atmosphere- and beat-driven, nominally trip-hop associated group than its predecessor, Bows bloomed into something equally adventurous and fulfilling as the acclaimed first band. On this album, they flew even higher.
With a foundation in the bleeding edge of UK PostRock, Sutherland and company’s oceanic swells bleed into entirely new territories, amplifying the latent dub tendencies of the former scene while skipping right over the forefront of then-popular Bristol trip-hop sounds into a starbursting heaven of cascading orchestral waterfalls and breathy dreampop vocals courtesy of chanteuse Signe Hoirup Wille-Jorgensen and Sutherland himself. The enigmatic low end throb provides a bedrock for the torrent of acid-bent melodic workouts embedded with a stream of sub-consciousness lyrics and oracular percussion.
Imagine your favorite deep 90’s Bristol album draped in the gauzy atmosphere of A.R. Kane or Cocteau Twins and shot through with terrifying elation and existential anomie. This is light years beyond that image. Leaning away from the club floor and into the fevered minds of blissed out dreamers, it’s the pinnacle of its kind. Perhaps the only one.
Fuck Buttons released one of the most interesting and polarizing albums of 2008, one of several named on my end of the year list (which would undoubtedly have been published here if Optimistic Underground was running at the time) and a perennial physical overload to unwitting passengers in my car. This October the English duo are set to blow faces off and disintegrate non-believers with the sonic asteroid they’ve named Tarot Sport.
Using the word epic to describe this music is beyond moot; it’s simply a given at this point. Yet this fact does little to temper the unshakeable urge to invoke it – and feel it – on every listen. This is the sort of thing epic was coined for. Kicking off with the dancefloor earthquake of Surf Solar, expanded to 10 minutes from its early incarnation as a 7″ single, the album shouts its thesis from a mountaintop and gets moving at a breakneck clip. With an insistent four on the floor beat and stocatto-spliced vocal clips there’s no wonder which of debut Street Horrrsing‘s tracks was the launch point for this sophomore triumph: shining, atmospheric, ass-shaking standout Bright Tomorrow. Every track, though submerged in the same industrial crunch mana Fuck Buttons are known for, feels more breathable, open, dynamic and most of all catchy, than anything they’ve yet created. Third track The Lisbon Maru gently (and subtly) conjures the pulsing power-surge key stabs from the debut’s stellar opening (and most popular) track Sweet Love For Planet Earth, swaddling the backbone in vacuumed reverb and what sounds like hundreds of damaged violins compressed into a small wind tunnel and dialing up the velocity throughout its run.
After this point the album transforms into pure, blissed out, pounding noisy nirvana. Fourth track Olympians blasted its way to the top of my list, where it reigns with impunity, after only my first two listens. Not content with merely teasing their dancefloor intentions or continuing to shy away from unabashed melody, this striking 10 minute centerpiece showcases everything Fuck Buttons do well and then some. Finally delivering on the ambitious promise suggested all along, the moment is a revelation: a band fully coming into their own as artists and hitting an undeniably assured stride. Nothing feels remotely tentative about the syncopated big beat drums beamed through the tonal cloud this song is born in, nor the manner in which every element seems to gather up, tightening into a coiled rhythmic outburst in anticipation of the mythical organ swells beginning three minutes in. It’s a gorgeous night sky colored with soaring waves of heartrending resonance and shimmering supernovas, exploding out of the mix like galactic pop rocks – a transcendent meteor shower as close and tangible as the ‘play’ button.
Topping that monster would be difficult, if not impossible; the guys instead turn and unleash a funky blast of head clearing noise bop in a (relatively) concise 5 minutes, before diving into sonic rollercoaster Space Mountain (appropriately titled) with driving tribal percussion and twinkling keyboards ablaze. A nearly-clean guitar tone drives the action, disintegrating in the atmosphere, enveloped in feedback, before giving way to the final push: closer Flight of the Serpent and its destructive martial stomp. Swooning UK post rock guitar moves over a clattering speed-march rhythm section, bursting with feedback at just the right moments and sharing the spotlight with a romantic organ pulse grown from Olympians‘ seed. Feeling almost like a burly reprisal of that apex, the swarm of drone flies suddenly drop away at the halfway point, exposing the skeletal drum pattern and letting it hang, galloping along unadorned for several moments. Thankfully, majestic crests of oceanic keyboard melody and shattering light beams of narcotic bliss return to guide the album to a satisfactorily dizzying end.
Watch this clip with the volume cranked to whet your appetite if my words haven’t already.
[and make sure to preorder the album at boomkat, norman records (vinyl!), or rough trade – or make your purchase at a local record shop when it drops on October 12]
I just discovered this. The first track on Flying Lotus‘ breakthrough Reset EP, the video is suitably hypnotic and matches the song’s mood perfectly. So watch it. And listen to more of his brilliant work. I’ll be helping out on that front in an upcoming post…
David Lynch is a 100% certifiable mad genius. This is statement of fact, not opinion. From film to music to writing to, well, reporting the weather, he’s a transcendental force to be rockoned with. In addition to having impeccable visual sense, an ear for ethereal storytelling, and the golden touch of endearingly profound weirdness, the man has unfathomably great taste in music. To that end, he recruited David Jaurequi and several session players to record the music for his seminal Twin Peaks film, Fire Walk With Me. Under the name Fox Bat Strategy, they appeared in the Pink Room and Blue Frank scenes, and also recorded this set of tunes written by Lynch… and promptly disappeared for years.
Upon Jaurequi’s death in 2006, Lynch decided to summon this shelved collection of haunting pop apparitions toward the light of day. It took him three years, but thank god he did at all. These seven tunes are beyond cool – the perfect crystallization of the alluring idea of his film work translated into a darkly romantic album.
Fox Bat Strategy is pretty much what a David Lynch fan would expect based on experience with his unique oeuvre. Sweetly menacing, reverb-laden old school bluesy rock sounds with a hint of pitch-black midnight surf guitar. Lyrics written by the man himself straddle the line between Roy Orbison– or Ricky Nelson-style saccharine love ballads and the unnerving prose laid out in the dreamier sequences of Blue Velvet, Mulholland Dr. or Twin Peaks itself. It’s too bad this is the only release we’ll ever hear; we can take comfort in the fact that there are at least a solid 40 minutes of smokey majesty to savor, again and again.
[please take the golden opportunity to purchase this via amazon or Mr. Lynch himself]
Yo La Tengo are one of the most consistently brilliant and longest-running bands in existence today, rivaled only perhaps by Sonic Youth in the longevity-with-strong-artistic-integrity department. They’ve crafted everything from ferocious punk blasts to elegiac orchestral epics, infusing every sound with their signature heartfelt energy.
JJ have dropped the newest dose of ecstatic balearic pop bliss from Sweden’s very own Sincerely Yours. This one’s a keeper, and the perfect balm to tide over fans of On Trade Winds and No Way Down until the next seismic event from that beguiling corner of the world.
Fans of Air France, Studio, and (to an extent) The Tough Alliance are well-prepared for this gorgeous dream experience. Everyone else: look at that cover, realize it’s not a hiphop album, and jump right in. Equatorial synth tones, reverbed percussion, hushed acoustics, tropicalia vibes, gently pulsing dub bass, and narcotic siren’s-call vocals all conspire in tugging unresisting listeners into a sweet dream of intimacy and comfort, warmth on the beach with a new lover. This is insanely easy to fall for.
[rush over to klicktrack and pick this up for the stupendous price of $8 – straight from sincerely yours!]
Optimistic Underground 