Magical Beautiful
Right Rock EP
I Hear A New World
By Jose Fritz
I’m leery of anything crowned with the adjective magical. In psychology magical thinking is a belief in nonscientific causal reasoning, including ESP, card tricks, omens, karma, homeopathic medicine, evangelical Christianity, and other forms of irrational thinking. Beyond childhood, there is a correlation between psychosis and magical thinking. There are also clear correlations between magical thinking and both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Obsessive compulsives adopt magical thinking to evade the stress of considering negative outcomes.
I should admit now the album is only an EP, but these are three beefy tracks coming in at a cumulative 17 minutes and 24 seconds. Ultimately I find no guile herein. Each track builds slowly towards uncertainty. We dress ourselves in words, armed and overheard. The album begins with indistinct tones, part theremin and part oramics. The noodling guitars enter, but suddenly cease. They recess and reconvene. They’re a cipher in the sea. In their most coherent moments I am reminded most of Phaser, in their slowest, most arrhythmic lulls I think of the kitsch sci-fi movies of the ‘50s.
The album rattles to life like a loose phono jack and then continues like a living 60 Hz ground hum, vibrating on until you cut the power. They pulsate like little stoned amoeba living inside Morton Subotnick’s brain stem. Tracks combine synthesizer bongo effects interspersed with ray-gun noises and echo effects, which is indescribable in its emotional connotation. The last track, for example, is devoid of traditional instruments, consisting entirely of hum, reverb and echo sounds that are entirely clarisonus if still indistinct.
What the record lacks is record crackle, a little dirt in the grooves, a yellowed paper sleeve, and a water-stained, 1950s Living Sound™ jacket. Inside the three tracks there is very little existing to ground the record or to make it material and mortal. It is not laid open the benign indifference of the universe. It stands instead, short in stature, but immune to all of us.
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