Towards The Shadow
General
| Dec 2018
Reviews
Your Imaginary Friend
Reviewed 2018-12-06
Reviewed 2018-12-06
Husband-wife duo from DC via Chicago: Fantastic analog synths with the woman singing and playing real drums (like crazy). A pure distillation of all the best things about bands like Neu, Stereolab, Trans Am. Synths and offtime mechanical beats lend a sci-fi element, especially when she delivers a monotone “robotic” singing style, but “prog” or “mathrock” also come to mind with the lack of straight 4/4 anything here. One of my favorite contemporary bands (I was lucky enough to catch them while on a weekend trip to Chicago 3 years ago), they do all of this live, no studio tricks here. Start with track 3, move to others for slightly more cerebral experience.
1)* (3:30) lovely analog blippy offtime countered with mathy drums, vocs delivered monotone with dissonant simple “melodies” 2)* (2:05) dark droney synth under light blips, a driving pounding drumbeat fades in and this becomes intense 3)** (5:17) this one is more accessible, almost indie pop, has urgency but approachability, melodic sense 4) (4:33) just a cool offtime “jam” 5)* (6:48) a strange divergence: simple tones, percussive, with a spoken word essay/dialog regarding societal structure, domination, why your job is fucking killing your humanity, delivered monotone, heady stuff 6) (5:09) very percussive beats, evolves to a pleasant one with nice vocals 7) (6:08) piano, smacks of avante jazz, upbeat fun, mixes it all up, later the woman contributes another spoken word thing 8) (5:58) slow phrased, trippy
1)* (3:30) lovely analog blippy offtime countered with mathy drums, vocs delivered monotone with dissonant simple “melodies” 2)* (2:05) dark droney synth under light blips, a driving pounding drumbeat fades in and this becomes intense 3)** (5:17) this one is more accessible, almost indie pop, has urgency but approachability, melodic sense 4) (4:33) just a cool offtime “jam” 5)* (6:48) a strange divergence: simple tones, percussive, with a spoken word essay/dialog regarding societal structure, domination, why your job is fucking killing your humanity, delivered monotone, heady stuff 6) (5:09) very percussive beats, evolves to a pleasant one with nice vocals 7) (6:08) piano, smacks of avante jazz, upbeat fun, mixes it all up, later the woman contributes another spoken word thing 8) (5:58) slow phrased, trippy
Recent airplay
Functionary
Brownian Motion — Feb 13, 2019
It's Okay
Everything but the kitchen sink — Feb 06, 2019
Genseq
Brownian Motion — Feb 06, 2019
Walled Garden
Magnetized Toner — Feb 05, 2019
Pool Of Light
Music Casserole — Feb 02, 2019
Functionary
Brownian Motion — Jan 30, 2019
Charting
2018-12-10 — 2019-02-11
| Week Ending | Airplays |
|---|---|
| Feb 10 | 3 |
| Feb 3 | 2 |
| Jan 27 | 1 |
| Jan 20 | 1 |
| Jan 13 | 2 |
| Jan 6 | 4 |
| Dec 30 | 2 |
| Dec 23 | 3 |
Track listing
| 1. | Walled Garden | ||
| 2. | Blood Moon | ||
| 3. | It's Okay | ||
| 4. | Ravel | ||
| 5. | Functionary | ||
| 6. | Shadow | ||
| 7. | Pool Of Light | ||
| 8. | Genseq |