Tag Archives: CAVE

2015, albums, Bandcamp, Captcha records, Chicago, music, reviews

onYou – “Ultimum Photon A Sole”

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Going with the theme of nearly instrumental albums, today we have onYou’s “Ultimum Photon A Sole,” full of slowly emerging, ever-growing structures full of hypnotic repetition. The first track, “A Grift,” definitely takes its time getting started, with the vocals not making their entrance until about 3 minutes in. After laying down a very clearly kraut-rock influenced foundation it comes as a pleasant surprise that some new wave tendencies are brought out with the vocals. About three-quarters of the way through things start to veer sharply off into the land of psychedelia. The pulsating rhythm is stripped away, the keyboards fade, and the guitar and cymbals work together in creating a wash of sound. All of a sudden there’s an ocean where just a moment ago there was a factory.

And there are so many moments like that throughout this album. onYou has an uncanny ability to maneuver some pretty drastic leaps of style, working from the almost overbearing tightness of their precise, lock-step rhythm section to an amorphous cloud of eerie sound effects. Essentially, the band is taking a one-part form with a simple and fairly static harmonic pulse, and creating sections within that.

“Finding the Wronskian” flowers out of the ending of the album opener. The guitar lays down a sparse harmonic idea, and before long the bass and drums are back in the game, gathering up all the loose ends and pulling the whole thing along again. An incredibly slow crescendo continually promises a huge eventually payoff. As the guitar builds itself up from the background, alternately fighting against the noise while helping to build it, we reach the moment we have been made to wait for. No sooner than the song reached its goal everything collapses again. The actual payoff comes about 4 minutes into the next track, “The Wronskian.”

The constant back and forth from these repetitive, motorik sections to those with a considerable amount of noise that are nearly arrhythmic, is what this album is all about. Of course, the extreme degree to which onYou is able to string us along as listeners, really growing that sense of anticipation to incredible levels, is also a factor. Throw into the mix some psychedelia and a tiny bit of that New Wave color and you’re pretty much there. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the intense Pink Floyd vibe that album closer “Adrift on the Wind” lays down. The album closes on a really strong note, with a catchy and fairly straight ahead psych-rock tune.

“Ultimum Photon A Sole” is out now on Captcha records on 160g cyan vinyl, which is pretty sick looking. Of course you should check out the bandcamp page to order the vinyl, or get a digital copy.

2014, albums, Bandcamp, music, reviews, songs, Soundcloud

Stream: Nicholas Nicholas – “Cave”

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Today we’ve got here a mellow, shoegazey two parter from Nicholas Nicholas’ upcoming sophomore album, “Wrong,” which is set for an August 19th release.

At the very opening of the track we hear a bellowing low note from which the music will soon blossom. We’re given all the instruments at once after only about a second, but the way that they grow out of that initial low note is so organic that it feels more like a warmth washing over you than it does anything drastic or jarring. A guitar enters, its echoes bouncing off every available surface and ringing across the the track. Backed by a wash of synth patches that leave trails in the distance and a steady drumbeat, the song isn’t treading on unknown territory. “Cave” traces a path through shoe gaze and chillwave, something that makes complete sense, but I don’t think has been much explored before. It’s as if the wall of sound was stripped away from a My Bloody Valentine song, leaving only the vocal technique and the idea of creating a sound that encourages some sort of contemplation.

The vocals are maybe the most interesting element of the song. Drawled out from a register well below any of the other instruments it sounds to be slowed down significantly, in essence really drawing out that effect of stretching time and laying so far back in the beat that the rest of the track seems almost resistant to the pulse. The music seems to pull the voice through the track, despite its desire to stay behind.

The piece more or less does away with a traditional verse/chorus/verse structure, instead choosing to sidestep via an extended coda. In some ways it sounds as though we have two different songs going on back to back here, the way the first dies out completely before the coda comes in. There is just enough contrast between the first and last half of the track to consider them as contrasts, but not so much contrast that they don’t go together.

“Wrong” is available as a cassette for pre-order right now through the Miscreant Records bandcamp for $5.

2013, albums, Chicago, music, news

New Release: CAVE – “Threace”

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CAVE
CAVE

The thing about mechanical music, or minimalist music, is that after a while one starts to hear the groove that is buried within the music, despite it desperately wanting to hide that side of itself. Every aspect of music is on a spectrum, but that spectrum loops back around at the ends so that any parameter, if it gets extreme enough, starts to seem like exactly its inverse. Take Kraftwerk for example, that music is so stilted and stiff and mechanical to the greatest possible extent that it actually seems to swing. Or take the incredibly highly organized and structured music of integral serialism. It is so ordered and every parameter is so thoroughly thought out that the music actually goes beyond order and starts to sound like chaos. Boulez starts to sound like Cage.

Well, that was a long way of saying that Chicago Kraut/prog/psych rockers CAVE are back with their 3rd album, “Threace.” Every song, on their previous releases, is an exercise in singularity. The groove (or lack of groove that becomes grove) locks in and doesn’t let go. Every riff is distilled to a thumping, driving, powerful, robotic cycle. Stereolab on acid trying to play Black Sabbath: that’s CAVE. That pretty much says it all.

Check out the video for “Shikaakwa” below, and some of their other videos up on the Drag City page. Highly recommended for fans of, well, yes, Stereolab and Black Sabbath.

“Threace” is currently available on Drag City as a CD, LP, Cassette, mp3 or FLAC download. You can check out more tracks here and here. CAVE is currently on tour around the US.