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 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 data 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 pissed off and thrilled by the lack of understanding; it appears like Pocket Moon is shifting 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 reward of a glimpse into that world, via our browser home windows.
You’ll be able to take heed to the session right here.
The tune coils across the chorus, “I’ve the makings of animal.” The phrase suggests self-composition: the speaker has every part essential to grow to be animal. However we may take the phrase in a extra Frankenstein sense. Perhaps 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 probably the most human sound in an digital wilderness. The voice appears reliable, and its sentences are easy. It’s simply the concepts which can be unusual and unsettling. The lyrics are stuffed with acquainted issues: fruit, water, the physique, animals. However the speaker takes these atypical issues in sudden instructions, asking questions like “ inform the physique a lie?” What new animal could be constructed by a personality who’s serious about issues like that?
The disjunction between the unusual issues the voice says and the on a regular basis manner it says them generates pressure within the tune. That pressure animates the query of what the brand new animal could be. When probably the most human voice in a tune tells us, “that’s me, animal,” we have now to recalibrate our sense of what the foundations are. Issues should not of their normal bins 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, should not 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 tune 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 potentialities into atypical rooms.
