New Music: Black Moth Super Rainbow, Efterklang

Black Moth Super Rainbow - Forever Heavy (Graveface 2007)

Black Moth Super Rainbow – Dandelion Gum / Graveface

I love writing about albums of colorful psychedelic whatever. The wackier the music the more I get to play with words to try and describe the ridiculously infectious sounds blasting from my speakers. A beautiful example of this was my review of The House of Apples and Eyeballs back in early December of 06 (way back when Audiversity was still just a hobby instead of the full-fledged obsession it is these days). A sticky-sweet collaboration between Austin’s The Octopus Project and the Pittsburgh mystery quintet Black Moth Super Rainbow, The House caused me to drop such ill-advised phrases as “like power drills somehow making sweet love to colorful balloons” and “rebuilding it with new vibrant sounds in structures so ridiculous that they would make a Doozer blush a reddish-green.” Yes, Fraggle Rock Doozers. This is why I love to write about music, very few boundaries and most of those are easily worked around. Anyhow, I have been a fan of The Octopus Project for a number of years now so it was not that surprising, but early last week I was finally blessed with a proper full-length from Black Moth Super Rainbow and a chance to hear a good chunk of the source material from the collaboration album.

Let me put it this way: if I had heard this album before The House of Apples and Eyeballs and knew that The Octopus Project was going to get a chance to tweak this grab-bag of psychedelic pop candy, the ridiculous sugar-high of my anticipation would nearly have put me in a coma. The Black Moth Super Rainbow allegedly hail from some disconnected forest in the vicinity of Pittsburgh, and if so, I think Willy Wonka may be sharing some floor space in their cabin (I hear he is an underrated bass player).

Now I am not say that the anti-social quintet are purveying a tweeting brand of simple indie-pop by using a lot of candy-like descriptions, quite the contrary in fact. They actually have more in common with Battles than Belle & Sebastian. There is definitely a mathy undertone to Dandelion Gum, it’s just baked heartily in a pie of analog synth jam, sugary melodies, gummy vocoder, dabs of flute, a crust of nearly mechanical drums and sprinkled with a wide array effect pedals. Tracks like “Lollipopsichord” and “Lost, Picking Flowers in the Woods” utilizing grating, mechanical synth sounds and stringent drumming, but the layers upon layers of popsicle melodies win over your ears every time. And again, these aren’t melodramatic Shins or some other indie-pop band's melodies we are talking about; they are much more akin to the psychedelic pop of the late 60s--“Strawberry Fields” melodies. Bass lines typically bob and weave around the many Moogs and Rhodes and monosynths and whatever other keyboards they have lying around, acoustic guitar strums in some humanity to all the gadgetry and some guy named Tobacco makes use of the vocoder as well as Alan Parsons ever did. Yes, yes, yes saying that he uses his voice as an instrument is a cliché description that is used (mostly by me) way too much, but goddammit, just listen to “Sun Lips” or “The Afternoon Turns Pink” and tell me it’s not practically an additional keyboard itself. There are lyrics under all that distortion somewhere, but the enunciations are unnecessary to understand his position, his tone typically says it all.

I think a lot of the appeal of Dandelion Gum is nostalgic as well. The combination of the wonderfully analog synth sound, Beatles-like flute swirls and some of those fantastic cringing melodic climaxes (“Forever Heavy” and “Untitled Roadside Demo” being the absolute best) definitely sends you back to those rampant psyche-pop bands of the late 60s/early 70s playing melodic music but in the wake of serious political and social issues. Which brings me back full-circle to my colorful descriptions of Black Moth Super Rainbow. It is hard to see too far past the synthetic fun and infectious melodies of Dandelion Fun, but there is some excellent musicianship on here as well. Hell, the album was three years in the making. Even if they clock in only about three minutes, do you really think pop songs this layered and cleverly structured are perfected over night? So while I may use a lot of cute terms to describe it, know that this music runs much deeper than most shallow pop music. And if it’s going to take another three years for Black Moth Super Rainbow to concoct another album up to this degree of enjoyability and impressiveness, then I’ll happily wait.







Efterklang - Himmelbjerget (Leaf 2007)

Efterklang – Under Giant Trees / Leaf

I bitch and moan and do everything I can not to accept it, but melodrama makes the world go round. Nothing sucks in people better than a scene of sheer, jaw-dropping drama, whether it be a horrific car accident, a heart-wrenching story of fighting adversary or, with our subject at hand, epic, soul-tugging post-rock. Evolved out of film scores where the music was composed to further accentuate the drama on screen, when it became acceptable to craft albums of slow-developing landscapes where the idea was not to hook the audience with a forefront riff but rather a finely presented heartfelt melody, melodramatic post-rock was born. From the first album released with these ideals we were done for. How can you not get sucked into such epic tales of grandiose musical imagery? Overcoming the powerful nemesis, losing the love to inescapable consequences, being left completely and utterly alone, we eat it up in platefuls even if they seem like unsavory subjects. From the multimedia narratives of Godspeed You Black Emperor to the effects-heavy hypnosis of Labradford to the pounding brood of Slint to the icy terrains of Sigur Rós (and many, many more at this point), we crave this melodic, grandeur tension. I for one fight it daily. I do everything I can to live a stress-free life from keeping acquaintances at a minimum to staying in most nights to never falling fully for a lady-friend; it absolutely lacks the excitement of someone living balls to the wall, but since I don’t experience the adrenaline highs, neither do I succumb to the spine-crushing lows. Don’t get me wrong though, I love me some post-rock, but I try to keep the soap opera side of the genre to a minimum. Well Efterklang snagged me with my guard down and now I’m heavily sighing, moodily swaying and feeling the wrath of the mountainous emotions the Danish collective have recorded for this limited-edition, five-track mini-album. And dammit, I love every second of it.

I think Efterklang has been able to rope me in more than some of the other groups because their music is a dense forest of interlocking sounds. It is not just walls of guitars or tectonic shifts of electronic noise or long-decaying piano reverb, it’s a myriad of acoustics, electronics, voices, and post-production all working together for lush compositions of heartfelt, melodic longing. Like the gorgeously crafted artwork, Efterklang are creating music to droopy, silhouetted forests, but continually splotch the night sky with rich blobs of color; never overtly prismatic, but enough to transform the dim backdrop into comforting kaleidoscope of soothing color. Their music works in the same way: the compositions are melodramatic, poingnant and yearning, but they score it to a wide array of instrumentation including but not limited to strings, brass, pianos, choirs, percussion and electronics. Including the five core members of Efterklang and two violinists from similar Icelandic act Amiina, five additional instrumentalists are used, not including the Dubbelgänger Mens Choir. The instruments swell brightly and brilliantly, but the music is downtrodden and somber; it makes for a very intriguing and hypnotic tension.

For an example of what to expect from Under Giant Trees, take album closer “Jojo.” The song opens with two harps trading bright tones over crunchy, stuttering electronics. Male/female vocals coo overhead and a delicate xylophone tacks it together. After about a minute-and-a-half, it breaks down into yearning vibes, piano and a violin before erupting with the original ensemble accompanied by swells of brass, a small string section and mountainous percussion. It ebbs again and then returns bigger than ever before finally succumbing to small sea of static. A few more vibe tingles, a couple organs and finally some brass counterpoint to round out the song. Yes, it’s a damn lot for your ears to take in, but Efterklang does a good job of balancing the tones and never letting the music meander without purpose.

Efterklang is certainly not the first to release this type of orchestrated post-rock, but I have to say it is some of the finest I have come across as a whole. Under Giant Trees is able to grab your well-protected heartstrings and pluck them with force, but they rarely do it with too much pretension or just for the sake of being melodramatic. While the orchestration is ridiculously abundant, it does not really come off too far over-the-top, only enough to really milk the tension. I am really enjoying each successive listen, but I really don’t think my speakers are suited for so much dynamic tension, nor is my apartment big enough for such mountainous moods. If there ever was modern non-classical music suited for a symphony hall, Efterklang is composing it.