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 stuffed with a spaceship’s price 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 is going to be a reliable information.
The band has recorded “Good Animals” (and two different tracks) in a dwell session at Bug Sounds, about which I can discover no info besides that it’s a “recording studio specializing in dwell periods that spotlight the philly scene” and is “all the time free for bands.” I’m equally annoyed and thrilled by the ignorance; it seems like Pocket Moon is shifting in the identical world the place I transfer, the true 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 reward of a glimpse into that world, via our browser home windows.
You may take heed to the session right here.
The tune coils across the chorus, “I’ve the makings of a very good animal.” The phrase suggests self-composition: the speaker has all the pieces essential to turn into a very good animal. However we may take the phrase in a extra Frankenstein sense. Possibly the speaker has the part 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 essentially the most human sound in an digital wilderness. The voice appears reliable, and its sentences are easy. It’s simply the concepts which might be unusual and unsettling. The lyrics are filled with acquainted issues: fruit, water, the physique, animals. However the speaker takes these unusual issues in surprising instructions, asking questions like “The way to inform the physique a lie?” What new animal may be constructed by a personality who’s enthusiastic about issues like that?
The disjunction between the unusual issues the voice says and the on a regular basis method it says them generates pressure within the tune. That pressure animates the query of what the brand new animal may be. When essentially the most human voice in a tune tells us, “that’s me, a very good animal,” we have now to recalibrate our sense of what the principles are. Issues will not be of their normal packing containers on this tune.
Pocket Moon’s nice reward 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 dwell 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 tune begins. In dwell 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 unusual rooms.