Posts Tagged ‘Not Not Fun’

Album of the day: Peaking Lights – 936

Posted on Friday, December 9th, 2011

As we move towards the end of 2011, here’s a worthy record that we overlooked the first time around earlier this year. Lovingly pinched from Pitchfork: It’s difficult not to be overly descriptive when talking about the kind of music that Wisconsin dub-pop duo Peaking Lights make. The band’s amoebic, sun-speckled concoctions are decidedly psychedelic; these guys do an eight-and-a-half-minute song called ‘Marshmellow Yellow’, after all. But the band’s sophomore record, 936, is less structurally ambiguous than it appears: If you can resist getting totally stranded in its opiate-friendly atmospheres, the joys of 936 are easy to pin down.

Peaking Lights work like a kaleidoscope, and not only because their music is so richly colored and fluid. The basic patterns are laid out right in front of you– catchy drum loops, loping bass rhythms, oily groove patterns– while the smaller, stranger details in your periphery help tie everything together.

Take ‘Birds of Paradise (Dub Version)’, a song that best characterizes Peaking Lights’ M.O. Aaron Coyes lets the clunky drums and bass line anchor the song neatly, while Indra Dunis provides some bewitching, hymn-like vocals. The rest is wonderfully detailed, as Spaghetti Western guitars, reverb, and curious spurts of keyboard drift by. There’s no need to clutter the song with extraneous patches of noise, no need to overstimulate. Peaking Lights make sure everything is carefully plucked, arranged delicately, and given room to breathe, with the groove handling the heavy lifting.

For fans of psych-journeyman Sun Araw’s collages, this might all sound pretty familiar. Peaking Lights are certainly close contemporaries, but the differences are crucial and indicative of their interest in fostering a subtler, more romantic feel.

Continue reading: Peaking Lights: 936 | Album Reviews | Pitchfork.

Tags: 936, Aaron Coyes, Indra Dunis, Not Not Fun, Peaking Lights, pitchfork, Zach Kelly
Posted in 2011, Album of the Day, Roadburn Recommended | No Comments »

Album of the day: Umberto – Prophecy Of The Black Widow (CD)

Posted on Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

Praise for Umberto‘s Prophecy Of The Black Widow from San Francisco’s aQuarius Records: It’s about a month late for Halloween, but we’re still pretty thrilled that this Record Of The Week from last year is now available as a CD! Here’s what we said about the original vinyl version which ...read more