The fundamentals for “Tone Poem” got here to Lunchbox’s Tim Brown one night time as he sat in his automotive outdoors work. “I saved a small acoustic guitar behind the seat for such events, and once I received house to the basement recording studio I shared with companion and bandmate Donna McKean, I discovered a drum loop on the Evolver grasp tapes and started to create this hypnotic sound collage.”
The Evolver to which Brown refers is none aside from the “misplaced” 2002 LP by the self-contained indie-pop duo. Probably the most experimental album within the Lunchbox catalog, it was additionally the very last thing Brown and McKean recorded earlier than a dozen-year hiatus that lastly ended with 2014’s splendid, unabashedly bubblegum comeback, Lunchbox Loves You.
With its dub-heavy Stereolab vibe, Evolver is a distinct journey. Recorded within the couple’s Oakland basement between stays in Berlin, a tour in London and drives alongside the breathtaking Mendocino shoreline, Evolver has the unfettered really feel of a stylistic travelogue. Someplace in there lies a chamber-pop masterpiece amid the ambient morass of suggestions, looping results, tape delay and compact ’70s synths. The brand new video for its fourth observe is premiering right here as a part of the ramp-up to the April 18 launch of a remastered model of the album by way of Slumberland.
“The sounds got here out of junk-shop ephemera—a classic Everett chord organ, an historic Mattel Optigan, a 1970 Micromoog—and an array of two-track recording decks,” says Brown of “Tone Poem.” “Drenched in tape-delay suggestions, with backward bells from the Optigan chiming in rhythm over chords from the Everett, the music is a dream message from one other world.”
Its storybook-surreal video is the work of Bay Space artist Kiki Petiford. “It’s her first frame-by-frame animation,” says Brown. “Impressed by the Artwork Nouveau aesthetic and the imagery discovered within the music lyrics, stars turn out to be angels and seeds bloom into flower goddesses. Twinkling stars and messy hand-painted interludes mimic how the music balances ethereal softness and noise.”
We’re proud to premiere Lunchbox’s “Tone Poem” video.
—Hobart Rowland
