Local
Grooves
bran
(...) pos
twat/face: prick/nose
(Chitah! Chitah! Soundcrack)
In the second beginning of his double CD, twat/face: prick/nose,
bran (...) pos walks to the mic, clears his throat, and then goes off
on what sound like very controlled raindrops, or a microwave-popcorn
synth patch, but, you come to realize, are only variations on
walking and throat acrobatics. From there and back, bran (...) pos –
a.k.a. Jake Rodriguez, a.k.a. one of the masterminds behind the much
beloved and woebegone Clit Stop, a.k.a. child star of All in the
Family spin-off Gloria – sneaks segues up on you, bringing
in granulated organ that sounds like it's being spit out Bach's ass
here, gamelan-laced mayhem and ice-cream-truck-visiting-a-remote-Amazon-village
rhythms there, and pulsing oscillations everywhere, alongside enough
slow spaces to make you feel like you're simultaneously crawling through
electronic music's attic and frontier. Throughout is an utter sense
of experimentation, prolificity, and humor (including the title and
the structure: the twat/face composition is actually on the prick/nose
CD, which clocks in at 99 tracks when, say, 69 or even 3 would do).
It's new music from the savant-garde tradition, which may go down a
bit hard for some. But for every Taryn Manning, Jared Leto, Keanu Reeves,
or other actor turned "easy-listening" pop star, I'm glad
to know there's someone like bran (...) pos, who is hacking his own
way around the given. bran (...) pos plays as part of the San Francisco
Electronic Music Festival July 25, SomArts Cultural Center, S.F. www.sfemf.org.
(M.P. Klier)
Troll
Pathless Land
(Orangesun)
Play Pathless Land loud. Troll are so quiet and unassuming that
their charm and ingenuity were almost lost on me the first time around,
when I made the mistake of lowering the volume of the San Francisco
five-piece's new EP, the follow-up to their much praised album Que
son los Trolls y en que nos Ayudan? At the right levels, "Mexicana"
whirls into view with sensual, swirling psych-guitar, levitating theremin,
intertwined male-female vocals in Spanish, and a never quite out of
hand beat. Are you gonna be at the Tijuana love-in, breaking on through
to the other side of Os Mutantes and the Standells? Are vocalist-guitarist
John Koch and singer-keyboardist Lotte Svennigsen cooing sweet little
nothings in Danish – or is it Japanese? – on that tempestuous
groove thing called "Western"? Whether they're dreaming up
quasi-krautrock, lethargic space jams, or minimalist, droning serenades
for the streets of Copenhagen, Kyoto, or Cabo, the experimentally minded
internationalists of Troll manage to unite all of the above in their
deep violet shadow – the kind of majestic, inky moodiness that
a shroom-munching David Lynch would appreciate. Troll play their
CD-release party Fri/18, Hemlock Tavern, S.F. (415) 923-0923. (Kimberly
Chun)
