drone

Superstition

admin — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:00:00 +0000

Anyone who follows music press would agree that Brooklyn has been a hotbed of indie creativity during the past decade. The styles run the gamut from freak-folk to experimental noise, to sugarcoated pop, to singer-songwriter confessionals, to good old fashioned rock and roll. From this creative vortex emerge the duo Christy and Emily with a sound that is a pastiche of all of the above.

Christy Edwards and Emily Manzo have created a sweetly drone-y and sharply melodic record with Superstition. The vocal harmonies are pitch perfect and the songwriting, which could be classified as quietly psychedelic, is well developed. The songs, like fog, seem to creep in with plenty of reverb and quietly distorted guitar. On the title track and the lovely “Nightingale,” the mellow haze clears enough to reveal classic folk melodies. On others, such as “105 & Rising,” the buzzing thump of layered guitars and improvised instruments becomes distinctly sinister. The album’s closing track, “Tigers,” showcases the band at their more upbeat and successfully invokes folk rock vocal patterns. The track also features guest drums by Brooklyn drone master Oneida’s drummer, Kid Millions.

The world of Christy & Emily is layered and ethereal. Trying to pin them to one sound is difficult and, ultimately, fruitless. Those grasping for a comparison might point to Damon and Naomi, or perhaps Coco Rosie without the trust fund and fake, white girl rap. As its title implies, Superstition is best captured by an emotion. It is dreaming, reaching, and searching for a feeling that could be a false lead, but could a new revelation and understanding, for better or worse. The reverb drenched guitar and sunny to stormy vocals enable listeners to stretch and reach to touch with their finger tips—but not quite grasp—one strong feeling.

Written by: Eleanor Whitney, March 12th 2010

Summary

admin — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 01:55:00 +0000

By BARR

5 Rue Christine

I can’t listen to this record without thinking the word "self-indulgent." Imagine you are in a room with a piano, a bass guitar, a microphone and your thoughts. Nothing is written down. In fact, the lyrics and instruments stream out in paragraphs. You talk about your life, friends, family, text message conversations. You sometimes sing, but the rest is basically spoken word.

This about sums up Barr's (Brendan Fowler and Corey Dieckman) new release, Summary. What’s important about this album is the lyrics. Fowler pushes the boundaries of what you can include in a song, but still keeps the songs relatively short. However, Barr pushes this stream-of-consciousness over a bland background of noise. While I appreciate the stripped down sound, it’s hard to pay attention to a mind-bending lyric if I only hear the same note being played over and over again. Maybe I just don’t understand the appeal, but this was a hard album to finish once. The best part? The second song is “The Song is The Single," and the lyrics tell all: “The song is the single and the single sucks/it never sounded good/it always sounded bad.” I can appreciate their honesty.

Written by: Courtney Ham, July 5th 2007

Remixed & Covered

admin — Sun, 27 May 2007 22:54:00 +0000

By Xiu Xiu

5RC

“Experimental” and “avante garde” may be the best ways to describe a band like Xiu Xiu. In earlier years their albums have come across as mind-boggling, nearly indescribable noise. Their newest release, Remixed & Covered, offers up some big-named friends that help decode the language that is Xiu Xiu.

Some may call it pretentious and others may question its integrity, but it can certainly be said that credibility is brought to this double disc by the likes of Devendra Banhart, Gold Chains and Kid 606, to name a few. Their interpretations of Xiu Xiu’s songs bring some sort of peace to the whole “noise” experience, or at least they did for me. The songs range from dancey to drone-like, ethereal, to heavily synthed. Oxbow’s cover of “Saturn” sounds a lot like the Black Heart Procession, while Marissa Nadler’s cover of “Clowne Town” brings a lighter feel. Some tracks are filled with quality while others are a bit headache inducing. If you can get past the obvious differences in the songs, which make it seem less like a compilation and more like a frantic jumble, the three-piece Xiu Xiu (Jamie Stewart, Caralee McElroy and Chess Smith) have proven that they are talented song writers, despite being almost experimental to a fault.

Written by: Lauren Begnaud, May 27th 2007

Taiga

admin — Sun, 06 May 2007 17:41:00 +0000

By OOIOO

Thrill Jockey

I have to admit, I was a bit concerned when I hit play on the first song of OOIOO’s album, Taiga. I’m not one to discredit noise as a musical form; I even own an album or two by Agoraphobic Nosebleed. However, there’s only so much “noise as art” that I can take at a time, and as the droning and incoherent screams of “UMA” came rushing into my headphones, I was seriously contemplating the ibuprofen in the bathroom cabinet. Luckily, the repetitive yelps of the first song are not present throughout, and there are some good moments. I appreciated the feel of “SAI,”, which sounded a bit like Yes, if they were influenced by Super Mario Brothers and Yoko Ono.

Perhaps I wouldn’t consider this album when recovering from a hangover, but despite the sometimes jagged hollering of the vocals, I enjoyed much of the tribal-cum-techno feel of Taiga. This isn’t the album for anyone who is firmly planted in the “verse-chorus-verse” mantra of western pop music, but I believe anyone who has an appreciation for the avant garde should make this an addition to their collection - just make sure to keep the Tylenol handy.

Written by: Emily S. Dunster, May 6th 2007

Cryptograms

admin — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 14:04:00 +0000

By Deerhunter

Kranky

Cryptograms, Deerhunter’s first album on Kranky, is the product of an extremely tumultuous time in the band’s life. After losing a member, the band tried recording the album in a single day early 2005. Deemed a failure at the time, this session makes up the first half of this album - a discordant, noisy, at times psychedelic tangle of guitars and yelps. “Cryptograms” and “Lake Somerset” take some elements of drone and noise rock and combine them with psychedelic elements, to make them more palatable, but no less interesting. The second half, recorded in another single day - this time in November 2005 - seems like a different band at times. The track “Spring Hall Convert,” starts with the lyric “And I woke up,” and sounds exactly like that, a rebirth of a band who had to overcome a lot to make this record. The pop (in the traditional sense) elements are more present in this second half, which is more hum-able and accessible, but, also no less challenging than the first half. “Strange Lights,” my favorite track on the album, sounds like something that could have been made by a modern band transported back to the 1960s to blow everyone away. Cryptograms, while seemingly sonically schizophrenic, is actually a complete description of the growth and evolution, personal and musical, of a band who is sure to become one of the most talked about of 2007.

Written by: Dana Reinoos, January 10th 2007