REVIEW: Exploded View - Summer Came Early

Phillipe Roberts

“And then the rain came, and then the birds fell, and then the deserts dried…”

With the icy resolve of an oracle, British/German chanteuse Anika Henderson doesn’t so much sing as prophesize. Her voice, an alluring grayscale mystery, tunnels into the present from a distant past, a blend of Nico’s calculated grit and the trance-speak wisdom of Broadcast’s Trish Keenan—a perfect companion to the ambitious art-rock noir backing provided by her bandmates in Exploded View.

Their first record, a compilation of direct-to-tape jams, was pure flashbulb memory. Intended to capture the lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry of those early encounters with her San Rafael, Mexico collaborators, the naked electricity present in those sessions captivated on its own terms, but traded an overarching narrative thrust for eye-of-the-storm ferocity. Now, on their second offering, Summer Came Early, Exploded View sharpen that jagged formula to a fine point, making the leap from imitative gestures to something fresh and tantalizingly futuristic.

Save for the glittering grooves of single “Orlando,” Exploded View’s strength lies in its apocalyptic charm; slathered in a healthy dose of atmospheric noise, the specter of death, decay, and devolution seemed to lurk at every turn, giving the impression that these sounds, this world, might come to an end at any moment—a nod to the off-the-cuff, improvisational nature of the sessions that produced the record. With the lineup now solidified into a cohesive working unit, Exploded View sounds entrenched, dug-in for the long haul. If their self-titled LP was a mad rush towards doomsday, Summer Came Early is a post-apocalyptic communiqué from the other side of the mushroom cloud.

Lyrically, Anika obsesses over a half-remembered past, painting a vision of a naive society on the brink of destruction on the standout title track. “We watched the trees blossom / We didn’t question a thing,” she sings, her parched voice choking on the dusty rattle of a tambourine, nodding towards a world ravaged by climate change with the repetition of the lines “The summer came early that year / But we sat on our porches and didn’t question anything.” It’s not quite protest rock, but the scorching emptiness conjured up by the band, embodying humanity’s rattle with lumbering bass and dry drums, drives the point home with stark efficiency.

From here, Exploded View slides into “Forever Free,” a graceful cinematic interlude that wraps sputtering percussive samples in a cocoon of heavenly synthesizers. It’s a blissful dream that’s cut short by the nightmarish fever stomp of “Mirror of the Madman,” the closest living relative to their first record. The dub echoes on Anika’s voice stack over broken tom-tom fills; she’s dissolving faster than she can speak, chasing after a ghostly presence that slips through her fingers: “I saw the exit door / And there she was.” The band rises and falls with her frustrations, building to a crashing high tide before powering down like a broken machine at the close.

The raga-rock Velvetisms of “You Got a Problem Son” close out the record, warping a fuzzy squawk of a guitar solo to its limits as Anika slips into the distance for a final time, locked in a hypnotic, chanting fugue state, reveling in retrograde sonics while stretching towards a decaying future. Prophets of a dying world, Exploded View prove they aren’t content with being a space-age oddity.

REVIEW: Art Feynman - Near Negative

Laura Kerry

Luke Temple has a knack for reinvention. As the founder of Brooklyn’s Here We Go Magic, he forged a path through five albums varying from intricate folk ditties to a dense fog of hazy pop and psychedelic synths with an increasing dose of krautrock. Temple picks up that last thread in his latest reinvention as Art Feynman, the name under which he released the full-length Blast Off Through The Wicker last July. Now, only half a year later, Temple has returned with a new EP, Near Negative, that both cements and expands the Art Feynman sound.

The process of reinvention hasn’t stopped with Temple’s new project, though. Throughout Near Negative, the artist continues to explore new sonic territory, shifting tones and sonic palettes while managing to achieve cohesion. In the opener, “Shelter,” which showcases the krautrock influence most prominently of any song on the EP, he sings an ominous melody over a tightly wound motorik beat, accenting the rigid repetition with a light touch of drone and the punctuated rise of “shelter” at the end of the chorus. By the second song, “I’ll Get Your Money,” Temple eases up a little, this time counterbalancing the low, driving forces of percussion and bass with a warm guitar line pulled from West African music. In the middle of the album, “My Tuke” offers a reflective, languid interlude without vocals, before “Love You Even More” picks up a bouncing bass line and tender, catchy melody that highlights Temple’s nimble voice and romantic side. In “Monday Give Me Monday,” Art Feynman returns to the vibrant guitar swirls of West African rock, before ending on the quiet but psychedelic “Asia’s Way.”

While most of the songs on Near Negative sound precise, propelled by the relentless rhythms of drums and bass, much of the joy in listening to the EP comes from Temple’s willingness—and ability—to subtly break the mold (a product, at least in part, of the fact that the artist constructs his songs on a four-track tape recorder, and not programmatically). Some of that mold-breaking emerges in the tonal variations between tracks; some of it manifests in more self-contained moments. It’s in the weird, scat-like vocals in the final stretch of “Shelter,” or the last ecstatic cry of the refrain that ends in a voice crack in the same song; the exuberant guitar solo at the end of “Monday Give Me Monday,” which whirls, surges, descends, buzzes, and pops for the better part of the track’s latter half; and the nervous density at the center of “I’ll Get Your Money.”

With his new EP, Temple has provided a satisfying amount of material to chew on—or, as is more appropriate for his wide-ranging breed of psychedelia, carry you into a daze as your head gently nods to the beat. It's possible you'll still be in that state by the time Art Feynman's next invention rolls around.

REVIEW: Moderate Rebels - Proxy

Kelly Kirwan

Moderate Rebels' name is something of an oxymoron, suggesting a nonchalant sort of insurgency against the norm. The London-based four-piece operate under the doctrine of simplicity, the negative space created by silences and curt sentences easily more intriguing than any tell-all. Their latest EP, Proxy, is rife with monotonous, chant-like choruses and a chugging percussion set alongside hypnotic, sweeping guitar riffs. Their lyrics are minimal and often repetitive, feeling like spoken word offered up in an underground bar, or a rallying call to lead a lethargic, tight-lipped march on the mainstream.

The opener, "Liberate," fits with the subcultural aesthetic they’ve adopted, the vocals taking on an almost automated feel: “See the deserts inside and outside / Made of glass / Hit you on the blindside / In your face … The dead and the living / We liberate.” The twangy guitars and backing chorus of ahs paint the melody in a warm hue that stands in counterpoint to the lead vocals' cooler delivery, their pitch unaffected until the line “We liberate” grows into a hypnotic command.

Then there’s the quickly-paced "Good For Business," which has a fairly sunny beat considering the morbid opening line, “Spreading and selling death every day / Don’t tell me there’s another way … And it’s good for business.” The song’s title (true to Moderate Rebels’ style) serves as the track’s thesis statement, frequently reiterated and wriggling into our heads to take hold, an undeniable earworm. The word "business" becomes increasingly elongated, its final consonants hissing over the clanging melody, as biting descriptions of the market bring the song to a petering close, “Ever-increasing business / Staggering amounts of business / Visionary new business.” 

Moderate Rebels' sound feels like a natural descendant of krautrock, experimental with swirls of punk and traces of the psychedelic, and their stylish approach makes for a unique and a refreshing listen. With the longest track stretching just over three minutes, Proxy is a sparse but formidable EP that’ll quickly burrow its way into your head.