ATTENTION!!!!!!!

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-Alon + Mikey

An Invisible Breath

Artist: White Rainbow (Portland, OR)
Album: Prism of Eternal Now
Label: Kranky Records (Chicago, IL)
Sounds Like: Boards of Canada, Charlemagne Palestine, Brian Eno, Can

White Rainbow is just one man (Adam Forkner) dictating through his atmospheric music what it feels like to float around in space, to melt time and to dream with your eyes open.

The CD starts off with the most accessible track which had me darting to my "Love" button on Last.FM. The first sounds come from the tribal drums which closely resemble Can's "Halleluhwah". After that White Rainbow introduces the obvious Boards of Canada influence with a repeating, warm, synthesized bass-line which has no trouble sinking into your senses. Beautifully next you find the El Guincho like echoing and overlapping vocal batter.

The reason I chose Can over anyone else in the "Sounds Like" category is not only because of the drums but because of the experimental guitar lines as well. The, what sounds like, completely improvised wailing guitar solos over the extremely layered and repeating background noises creates a sense of leadership throughout the calming chaos.

Track 5, "April 25 11:14 PM", sounds like a cold and slow creation of something warm and beautiful. The minimalistic ambiance immediately brings Eno and Charlemagne to mind.

The whole album is great to make you wonder. It can easily be used as music to drift off to or sleep to or to enter the bizarre world to. I give this album my recommendation and remember kids; feed your head...

Goo goo g'joob!!

I just stumbled upon this clip of a new film called I Met The Walrus. I've always thought Lennon came off as a pretentious, self-righteous asshole -- George Harrison is definitely my favorite Beatle -- but this interview with Lennon is beautiful. In my opinion, the "peace" message too often becomes trivial posing for attention-whore celebrities, but John was an extremely intelligent guy. Despite his personal failures -- we all have them -- it's too bad he's not around anymore. Here's a little more about it: "In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon's every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon's boundless wit, and timeless message." I recommend you check it out!

A serious, yet joyful eulogy

Artist: Panda Bear (New York, NY)

Album: Young Prayer (2004)

Label: Paw Tracks (Washington, D.C.)

Sounds Like: Animal Collective, Gregorian chant

On Young Prayer it sounds as if Noah Lennox, instead of dropping acid on a camping trip with the other members of Animal Collective, took a bunch of barbiturates, picked up his acoustic guitar, and checked into a Christian monastery. Apparently written in the wake of his father's death, Young Prayer is the polar opposite of death metal. Bands like Opeth might cover the same morbid subject, but Panda Bear establishes something like Gregorian chant for the 21st century. It is pensive, meditative, and therapeutic music, but also empty of the subtle sobriety and darkness that is so essential, in my opinion, to Gregorian chant.

When it comes to death, however, a lot of artists submit to sentimentality and cheap shots at maudlin reflection. We are lucky that there are no such superficial diversions on Young Prayer. Lennox is perfectly pensive and brooding, but also successfully maintains the freaky, happy-go-lucky rapture of Animal Collective.  

Instrumentally, the album consists of indecipherable wails and moans, acoustic guitar, and piano -- containing nine untitled tracks. For the most part, they are hard to distinguish between, flowing together almost seamlessly. The first song grabs your attention immediately as a beautiful moan leads into soft, melodic strumming. The third song has a nice bouncy piano rhythm. The fifth song is the most upbeat and celebratory on the album, full of clapping and hooting. The seventh song is extremely ambient and the most aurally similar to Gregorian chant. The moans and sobs from the previous tracks become fleeting and almost inaudible, producing an eerie atmosphere.

It's important to note that I listened to Young Prayer about a year and a half after first listening to Person Pitch, which is now probably one of my favorite albums. Altogether, Person Pitch is a very different record. As Young Prayer does not have the pop sensibilities of the latter, the comparisons to the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson are inadequate. Young Prayer is a very interesting, unique album and I've never heard anything before that really compares to it.

This is what goes on under the ocean

Artist: Giants (Cedar Falls, IA / Chicago, IL / St. Louis, MO)
Album: Old Stories (2008)
Label: Cavity Records (Toledo, OH)
Sounds Like: Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky, Mono
On Tour!!!

This CD starts with a gorgeous crescendo of light and many, many guitar tracks. Right away any fans of post-rock should be salivating.

Giants sound very much like Explosions In The Sky until it, well, explodes. Giants get much heavier than Explosions ever do as they find themselves more on the side of Mono in that department.

At moments on the album Giants reveal their dark side. The repeating waves of depression and hopelessness crash down over and over again however they keep their beautiful and screaming guitar melodies very much in the foreground. It is as if their musical plain is a battlefield and what an epic and dazzling battle it is.

Giants have no singing so in the down time when there is typically (in post-rock) either singing or maybe just a guitar, Giants fill the void with a 'shoegazey' feedback (Deerhunter's Intro track off of Cryptograms comes to mind) or sweeping electronic drones.

As one song leads to the next this band has no trouble differentiating their sound and that is most evident through the different feels of the drummer. The drums often time mirror Explosions' drums (which is a HUGE compliment) and other times sound more like Boris' drums. I very highly recommend this band for fans of post-rock music. At last ashore.