releases
Golden Birthday
Infinite Leagues (rbbd001 CD, LP, mp3) store
Golden Birthday overlay old, half-broken drum machines and effect-laden keyboards with simple yet satisfying guitar hooks to create warm, off-kilter pop on their debut record Infinite Leagues. The album is an example of the effectiveness of earnest pop music stripped down to its bare elements. This is honest music; not self-conscious in the least. Love is a major motif throughout the record, as is apocalyptic paranoia and friendship; all themes which we can relate to and value the sincerity of Sullivan's delivery.
Night Gallery
Constant Struggle (rbbd002) store
Constant Struggle was recorded by Ross and Griffin between 2008 and 2010 and the songs are an interesting mixture of a combination of the two's styles. This comes across in a way that the eight tracks on the album skate the line between pop ballads you want to sit down and listen to by yourself and mid-party dance floor jammers. The songs are simultaneously serious and playful; tongue-in-cheek but also heartfelt- we hope you enjoy them as much as we do.
White Car
s/t EP (rbbd003 12in, mp3) store
The debut EP White Car is a record of eccentric paranoia and restrained emotion, characterized by a voice of hushed stammers and deep obsessive murmurs. The record's lyrical content explores ideas of hypothesized reality and the perceived nature of truth, instinctive desires in relation to the concept of love, and the apathetic guilt of other's mania and pain. The skeleton of the music is created by a solid rhythmic foundation of funk, vintage electro and proto-industrial references. Employing the empty spaces of these grooves is an assortment of spontaneously placed clamorous bursts, chugging analog arpeggios, faux brass sections and layered electronic percussion. Many of the record's sounds might be deemed "unusable" by contemporary production standards, yet White Car discovers ways to make sense of tones like electric piano, sampled turntable scratches, vocal scat and orchestra hits. The humor of the sound palette is deliberately used to identify a caricature of fear and darkness.
Robert A.A. Lowe
Fazo IV: La Kvalito de Speguloj (rbbd004 LP) store
On Fazo IV: La Kvalito de Speguloj, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe constructs haunting, beautiful, at times hypnotic rhythms and melodies using synthesizers. His love of the warm, bubbling, physical sounds of the synthesizer permeates these seven songs, which seem simultaneously strangely familiar yet also somehow distant and alien.
Fazo IV: La Kvalito de Speguloj (Phase 4: The Quality of Mirrors) is a further extension of Lowe's exploration of sonic vocabularies and emotional landscapes. Because the modes Lowe utilizes are tonally and melodically universal to his ear, he has titled the album in the language of Esperanto-- the universal language constructed to foster international understanding and peace. This notion of universal understanding comes through in waves on Fazo IV. There is a certain tranquility in these tracks-- something very meditative and therapeutic; a calming honesty that leads the mind inward and transcends language.
Konnichiwa
Maiden China & Fortress Field digital single store
In these two tracks the duo demonstrate their ability create timeless-sounding electronic pop interwoven with delicate dreamlike vocals stunningly and effortlessly. We'd like you to have a listen. Full length coming Summer 2010.
Night Gallery
Constant Struggle cassette single (limited edition of 100) store
Night Gallery is Adam Griffin- a member of Golden Birthday, and Aaron David Ross- one half of the duo Gatekeeper. The Constant Struggle cassette single is a taste of what's to come on their full length later this summer. It contains four tracks that will be appear on the record and a download code.
