This is something I dug up on my regular record hunting expeditions: It's another one of those psych-surf-rock albums given a modern twist with healthy lashings of synthetic goodness and electronic weirdness. Astro are from Santiago, Chile, yet I don't hear too many Latin American influences in their music besides the language they sing in. It's always interesting to hear particularly western or anglophone pop music put through the filter of a different ethnicity - it usually results something utterly compelling, like Serge Gainsbourg's amazing early jazz experimentations.
I particularly enjoy Track Six on this album, entitled Rai Filter, for its house-influenced piano riff and fat drums - it references what can be a quite cliched dance music trope but pulls it off quite well. Another standout is the She's A Tease remix of Maestro Distorsion, the third last track on the album; the vocals twisted and reverbed, and a cheeky sample of Everybody Dance Now never fully revealed, just to live up to the 'She's A Tease' moniker.
I'm frequently reminded of The Mars Volta or the most recent MGMT output, not so much in song structure as the overall expansive sound of the album; there are times where the songs feel as though they were recorded in a massive ice cave or cold, expansive cathedral. the Volta are known widely for their lengthy and overbearing tangential experiments, but here Astro keep things concise, creating strange sonic landscapes within the structure of the 3 minute pop song - indeed, no song on the album is more than 4 minutes. Electronic pops and crackles and weird half-formed sounds punctuate, adding flourish and decadence to each tune.
By turns euphoric, despairing, camp and strange, the album is over fast, barely longer than half an hour. So all up, you're talking about 1/1238234th of your life - probably one of the better-spent half hours, really. Check it out, I doubt you'll be disappointed.
Astro - Le Disc De Astrou (2010) - [.zip /// HF]
later,
No comments:
Post a Comment