Thursday, August 23, 2012

The Fractal Sound / Kyoto self released single


The guys from The Fractal Sound out of Spain let me know about a split single they just put out with Kyoto, both of these bands working with a layered shoegaze wall, The Fractal sound heavy on the dynamics, carefully building soaring ever climbing guitar based distortions and Kyoto programming equally complex, sinister dance tracks. A weird mix for sure, both unsettling takes for the apocalypse.

The Fractal Sound side comes heavy with "FOSTER THE DEVIL / HELIUM (ITERATION TWO)" layers of distant hazy guitars, strumming away way under a subdued loose organ melody that skitters around on top of their huge landscape. Keeping any steady obvious rhythm just at bay, some really abstract kind of timing here. The vocals are thin and metallic, trapped in a tiny box coming off like Gish through a tin can telephone. Just when things start to pick up, they bring it all back down to that warm hammond. As quickly everything is stacked back up, the guitars literally swirling around sounding like reel to reel tape slowed down to quarter speed, windy, blowing around for the second half, dying out to a simple soft handed organ melody that must be the Helium (Iteration Two) part of this. A slow rimshot beat builds in with distant crashes and plodding bass line that immediately picks up, to begin that trail straight up. A brief pause, just over the top of that next hill and their back up on that plateau, the dynamics building with an endless sustained guitar, a mix of psych slow evolution and epic arrangement like a paisley Explosions In The Sky. I'm imagining this has to be pressed at 33 1/3 to get both of these epic sounds on one side.
Kyoto does a track entitled, "Criaturas de la noche" that begins with some real demented vocal, like one of those undercover news reports hiding the informants identity, except this is the devil. Chimey keys and a pop female vocal gleefully juts in, a double echo tom beat, and shiny melodies like a tropical Stereolab. "John Carpenter" the second track starts with a glitchy off kilter loop, bent under multiple reverbs, all static hits. Ominous chords butt in with that twinkly Halloween style melody, just slightly off... dropping down instead of up, somehow keeping that creep and going for dance at the same time. Echo'd samples bang around behind this, unrecognizably warped and sunk underwater. Bells of all kinds clinking and that sliding moog sine wave rolling in with an accordion finish this off.

You'll have to pick this up import only from their bandcamp page. Down to their last 25, three colors to choose from, black, transparent red or transparent blue.



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