I’ve been ready most of this yr to come across any recording of Philadelphia’s synth and cello duo, Pocket Moon.
They performed at Comet Ping Pong in D.C. final January, in a tiny room behind the pizza parlor portion of the venue, which they full of a spaceship’s value of synth rhythms and the alien voice of a cello run via results pedals. Austin’s synths assemble unusual worlds, via which the listener follows Kelly’s voice, hoping it will likely be a reliable information.
The band has recorded “Good Animals” (and two different tracks) in a reside session at Bug Sounds, about which I can discover no info besides that it’s a “recording studio specializing in reside periods that spotlight the philly scene” and is “all the time free for bands.” I’m equally annoyed and thrilled by the lack of awareness; it looks like Pocket Moon is transferring in the identical world the place I transfer, the actual one, the one which has chilly January nights and unusual music. Bug Sounds have given these of us not presently within the Philly scene the present of a glimpse into that world, via our browser home windows.
You possibly can take heed to the session right here.
The track coils across the chorus, “I’ve the makings of a superb animal.” The phrase suggests self-composition: the speaker has the whole lot essential to turn out to be a superb animal. However we might take the phrase in a extra Frankenstein sense. Possibly the speaker has the element components to place a “new animal” collectively. The synths undertake this science fiction experiment, producing the squeaks, chirps, and gurgles of small unseen creatures, and on the finish of the bridge, issuing a cyborg howl.
Within the spare association, Kelly’s voice stands out as probably the most human sound in an digital wilderness. The voice appears reliable, and its sentences are easy. It’s simply the concepts which are unusual and unsettling. The lyrics are filled with acquainted issues: fruit, water, the physique, animals. However the speaker takes these abnormal issues in sudden instructions, asking questions like “Methods to inform the physique a lie?” What new animal is perhaps constructed by a personality who’s excited about issues like that?
The disjunction between the unusual issues the voice says and the on a regular basis manner it says them generates stress within the track. That stress animates the query of what the brand new animal is perhaps. When probably the most human voice in a track tells us, “that’s me, a superb animal,” we’ve got to recalibrate our sense of what the foundations are. Issues will not be of their regular containers on this track.
Pocket Moon’s nice present is unsettling listeners sufficient to sharpen our consideration, to make us actually take note of the worlds their songs create.
These worlds, unusual as they’re, will not be separate from the one we reside in. The Bug Sounds recording emphasizes the continuity between our world and the world of the music by together with the band’s dialog with their engineer earlier than the track begins. In reside efficiency, the continuity is much more evident. The band creates a pocket universe within the locations the place we hear them, bringing new prospects into abnormal rooms.
