Ajnabi (side project of Howth's Blake Luley) set out to compose an emotionally charged auditory representation of his relationship with Palestine. One of the two tracks he produced is the momentous "Gaza." It begins as a dark, brooding ambient composition conveying the ominous threat of war and builds until it erupts into a fiercely chaotic storm of distorted noise. It's all the more fascinating to consider the amazing intrinsic symbolism of the track as it was composed with a sample from Simon & Garfunkel's "America," a song that begins with hope and happiness but slowly falls into sadness.
Imagine the times you’ve stood in a crowd, surrounded by flashing lights, advertisements, chattering voices, and all other sorts of ambient noise from bustling city life. Despite the sea of distraction and noise, there are moments where you find yourself elsewhere. You’re still firmly set in the center of this commotion, but instead of drowning in it all, you drift off to someplace devoid of outside influence. It’s these transportive moments that offer up a meditative clarity, bringing forth a humbling awareness of what you may have previously overlooked or what particular things mean. Picture yourself seated in a small paddleboat on the sea, and you realize how miniscule you are against the infinity of the horizon.
Finglebone (aka Adam Varney) manages to capture this inward journey with 23. Through headphones, this nine-track album eliminates tangible surroundings and forces you to venture into a mentally constructed world. Through a mix of field recordings, loops, drones, and acoustic guitar passages, Finglebone constructs a tranquil yet intensely pensive sort of head trip. Whether it’s the sinister drones and unintelligible, field-recorded chatter on “The Picture Became Alive” or the birds chirping beneath the almost heavenly-sounding notes from the acoustic guitar on "Lucid," the emphasis is clearly on the negative space in the overall sound. Finglebone’s intent with 23 is helping us to discover that melody is not strictly something that must be manufactured; melody is something that exists all around us. It’s an album of ambient exploration that highlights the natural music of our world.
With an elastic-sounding, heavily distorted bass thumping and plucking along throughout, "Honest Parade" hits heavy. But it also breaks every few measures for heavenly verses marked by acoustic guitar and airy vocals. It's ambient that straddles the line between the light and the dark; a catalyst for thought that forces you deep into recesses of your mind. "Honest Parade" is so complexly beautiful.
Phantogram - Eyelid Movies MMM1/2 Phantogram is lost in translation.
Now wait, that's not necessarily negative. Working through the Saratoga Springs duo's debut release on Barsuk, I'd had flashbacks to Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson wandering through fluorescent wonderlands, occasionally broken up by images of the chemical and mystic light of the nondescript city of Tyler Durden.
Eyelid Movies isn't just a strong reminder of those curious moments in cinema, it's lost in translation between genres, something that a lot of up and coming bands struggle with. I want to make it perfectly clear that fitting into the preconceived genres we music critics come up with on the Internet isn't a prerequisite to a successful album. Rather, where Eyelid Movies conjures up that dreaming image as a title and it's a pretty literal description of the album's tone.
And that tone leads me to struggle with an album that doesn't quite settle for ambiance, even though moments of brilliant composition and chorus ("You are the Ocean"), or even dynamic hip-hop rhythms ("Futuristic Casket") scream to be fleshed out.
Phantogram use a pretty standard mix of machine-clinking drums, airy and echoing melodies and harmonies, and the occasional well-looped guitar riff to rope us into their sound. Truthfully, it's not a bad place to drift into when you're looking for an album to relax the mind, or stimulate that subconsciousness that is always asking for a beat. The band definitely has convention on its side. When it comes to a good hook and and ghostly harmonies, Eyelid Movies doesn't disappoint.
It would be interesting for me to see what comes out of Eyelid Movies. Phantogram has had no trouble demonstrating here that they have talent for soundtrack music, but I would like to see them take the base they've built here and strike forward into some uncharted territory.
Phantogram is the brainchild of Upstate (relative term, I know) natives Josh Carter and Sarah Barthel. See them at SXSW and on tour this spring with the Antlers. Phantogram on Myspace
