Suuns
“images du futur”
Year Released: 2013
Like: pavement, Liars, Sonic Youth
Highlighted Songs: ‘020,’ ‘Mirror Mirror’[102]
“Images Du Futur”
Montreal-based rock outfit Suuns’ 2013 album highlights an affliction to give what the audience and listeners desire, a well-rounded conventionality.
“Images du Futur” spits vocalist Ben Shemie’s Joy Division-style harmonies, layered on top of daringly groovy indie-rock instrumentations.
The song “Mirror Mirror” centers itself around tripping guitar riffs, whirling bass lines and crisp percussion chops.
Their most popular track, “2020,” coils around a simple, wailing guitar lead, constricting the consumer into a head-nodding daze only kept in check by snappy rhythms and glittering, ambient production.
Finding success in simplicity, Suuns strikes swiftly with their 45-minute stretching of rock’s boundaries.
Animal Collective
“Strawberry Jam”
Year Released: 2007
Like: Panda Bear, Beach House, Avey Tare
Highlighted Songs: ‘Fireworks, ‘For Reverend Green’
“Strawberry Jam”
Even though experimentation shows artists diversifying their sound palate, AnCo’s 2007 release hits a snag with the inability to keep its (as well as the listener’s) own attention.
The psychedelic-pop quartet had struck large with their numerous hit albums (including the indie darling “Merriweather Post Pavilion”), yet, without a structured focus on their strengths, “Strawberry Jam” ends up sounding as if a flock of crows suddenly gained the sentient urge to use synthesizers and vocal effects.
Cuts like the gorgeously epic “For Reverend Green” finely experiment with jaggedly discordant melodies and guitar licks that whirl around the speaker channels while Avey’s scattered, yelping vocals ricochet their nihilistic observations against the repetitive beat.
Yet, this is one of the few songs on the album that doesn’t grow tiring within the first few seconds. The hyper-repetitious refrains on “Unsolved Mysteries” are like a heaping spoonful of sugar. The carnival-like patterns on “Fireworks” get cyclically nauseating. Even the shortest song on the album, “Winter Wonderland,” overstays its welcome, with what can only be described as if the Beach Boys dabbled a bit too much in LSD and pitch shifting.
Altogether, one’s time within Animal Collective’s discography would be better spent on a more ethereal release (such as 2003’s “Campfire Songs” or their 2017, forest recorded EP “Meeting of the Waters”), instead of drudging through nearly an hour’s worth of music that ends up creating more raised eyebrows than gaped jaws.
Against All Logic (A.A.L.)
“2012-2017”
Year Released: 2018
Like: Nicolas Jaar, Jamie xx, Joe Goddard
Highlighted Songs: ‘This Old House Is All I Have,’ ‘I Never Dream,’ ‘You Are Going to Love Me and Scream,’ ‘Rave on U’
“2012-2017”
Incomparable to world disasters or timeless sports highlights, music creates a temporary band-aid that can be applied on repeat, and who else to soothe this hypothetical pain other than Chilean electronic artist, Nicolas Jaar.
On the night of February 17, 2018, the independent music label Other People (founded by none other than Jaar) released an 11-song album with no press and no advertisement. No words were said publicly for the album up until the ones sampled on the first track were exposed (a song that masterfully utilizes a 1973 cut from funk guru Mike Kirkland).
Within the intro track “This Old House Is All I Have” is a concise blend of soulful funk and smooth percussions. Accented by psychedelic guitars, saxophones and chopped choirs, this track shows styles that Jaar had experimented with before (with varying success), and the A.A.L. alias was revealed to be Nicolas himself.
From this introduction track until the final song “Rave on U,” too much happens to fit into ink. Yet, this final track could comprehensively depict the sound Jaar went for throughout the course of the record.
“Rave on U” presents the welcoming and familiar sequences that ratchet themselves to Jaar’s atypical musical style. Edited synthesizers that seem pulled from Aphex Twin’s debut downtempo masterpiece “Selected Ambient Works 85-92” find themselves alongside clanging eastern rhythms often utilized by his microhouse counterpart Four Tet. Above these comparisons however is a specific experimental edge that within the confines of the current electronic music genre, cannot be matched nor mimicked.
The conventionalities of normal sounding electronic music are turned on their stool by this 5-year spanning compilation album. Through a slew of amplifier bursting deep house slappers, distorted synthesized melodies and uniquely repetitious rhythms, only someone as patiently deliberate as Nicolas Jaar could be underneath the question-mark printed burlap sack that is Against All Logic.
Rem Jensen can be reached at [email protected]