I’ve been ready most of this 12 months 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 by results pedals. Austin’s synths assemble unusual worlds, by which the listener follows Kelly’s voice, hoping it is going to 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 classes that spotlight the philly scene” and is “all the time free for bands.” I’m equally annoyed and thrilled by the lack of knowledge; it seems like Pocket Moon is shifting in the identical world the place I transfer, the true 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 present of a glimpse into that world, by our browser home windows.
You possibly can 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 thing essential to develop into 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 essentially the most human sound in an digital wilderness. The voice appears reliable, and its sentences are easy. It’s simply the concepts which might be unusual and unsettling. The lyrics are filled with acquainted issues: fruit, water, the physique, animals. However the speaker takes these unusual issues in sudden instructions, asking questions like “How one can inform the physique a lie?” What new animal may be constructed by a personality who’s eager about issues like that?
The disjunction between the unusual issues the voice says and the on a regular basis manner it says them generates stress within the tune. That stress animates the query of what the brand new animal may be. When essentially the most human voice in a tune tells us, “that’s me, animal,” we’ve to recalibrate our sense of what the principles are. Issues usually are not of their regular containers on this tune.
Pocket Moon’s nice present 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, usually are 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 prospects into unusual rooms.
