Black Moth Super Rainbow’s previous album Falling Through a
Field was one of 2003’s stranger records. On it, the Pennsylvania trio forged a loose, homespun sound that merged the world-weary vocals and guitars of Illyah Kuryahkin with the steady beats and childlike atmospheres of Boards of Canada. The (mostly instrumental) songs sounded deceptively happy on the surface, but what few lyrics there were underscored a truly fatalistic outlook. I used the phrase “melancholy pastoral funk” when I reviewed this record, and I still stand by it. Judging from Start a People, not much has changed in the last year or so and, for the most part, that’s a good thing!
The first song, “Raspberry Dawn,” gains momentum by adding one element at a time: an ascending melody, a descending contrapuntal melody, a hissing break beat, sustained organ chords and, finally, an orchestra of Vocoders harmonizing with each other. The rhythms sound as if they were triggered manually on an archaic drum machine, and all of the other sounds seem to be generated from vintage analog keyboards. If I took a tour through the band’s recording space, I’d expect to see Moog and Farfisa logos cattle-branded all over their instruments. Last but not least, a thick syrup of vibrato is slathered onto everything, the kind of vibrato that would be tolerable to BOC and My Bloody Valentine fans, but would induce motion sickness in everybody else. “Seeeds” [sic] even takes the wooziness a couple of steps further, perfectly simulating the drags, the dropouts, and the static of a warped vinyl record.
On many songs, such as “From the See,” “Count Backwards to Black” and “Early 70s Gymnastics,” instruments are run backwards and forwards at will in an attempt to make time stop for the listener. Radical switches in fidelity are employed. For instance, “I Am the Alphabet” is presented in two versions, one a minute-long interlude with traditionally booming sonics, the other a more fully developed song that sounds like it’s being broadcast from an AM radio. Despite the sonic trickery, every song sounds as if it’s been stripped down to its barest essentials. Once you get used to the excessive vibrato, Black Moth Super Rainbow’s music goes down surprisingly easy. The bossanova picnic soundtrack of “1 2 3 of Me” even comes close to sounding like elevator music.
This brings me to the only complaint that I can muster against Start a People: it goes down a bit TOO easy. The human elements that permeated BMSR’s previous record are almost completely gone: there are no unprocessed vocals, and only one track (the luscious and lugubrious “Hazy Field People”) has guitar on it. I do admit that the croaking, tuneless whispers on Falling Through a Field made the album a hard sell, and that I personally don’t miss them that much. However, the vocals did keep BMSR from sounding completely like a poor man’s Boards of Canada, and their intermittent appearances kept the individual songs from blurring into one another. Fortunately, the band’s made more than enough improvements in arrangement and musicianship on Start a People to partially compensate for the album’s lack of a human touch.
Besides, the absence of real vocals doesn’t completely shield the listener from having to face the music’s core sadness. Although all of the album’s lyrics are sung through an unintelligible Vocoder, a glimpse at the words in the CD booklet reveals that BMSR are still as laconic and morbid as ever. The complete lyrics to “Vietcaterpillar” are, “Sunshine came late today. Sundown came late today. When we die we go away.” The complete lyrics to “Seeeds” are, “There is death and love and awful things. The sunlight takes away all that it brings.” BMSR were nice enough this time to give listeners the option of tuning out the words instead of forcing them to reckon with the previous album’s despondent singing. However, just as it is in the music of Boards of Canada, the woozy vibrato is still there to remind them that something is amiss. You can run, folks, but you can’t hide.
---Sean Padilla
(P.S. I couldn’t work this into the proper review coherently, but the eleventh song, “Trees and Colors and Wizards,” RULES. Find a way to hear this song. Trust me on this one!)
Artist Website: http://www.blackmothsuperrainbow.com
Label Website: http://www.70sgymnastics.com
Label Website: http://www.graveface.com
No comments:
Post a Comment