i  <esau

off their upcoming album, EXPO.

i usually find it reductive and debasing to equate one band's music to another's, but sometimes a song triggers a pattern-matching reflex in me like a hammer to the knee. here it was the drum beat, the four-quaver snare fill, like "what is that? where have i heard that before?"

turning the dial on my brain's radio like kip kasper, i eventually found it. it's just another ulrika spacek song : No 1. Hum (in the groove at the end). with rhythms, there are only so many permutations of ideas that are on-genre, and drumming is often an intuitive, trancey thing, i wonder if they noticed? i remember accidentally "writing" the beat to Apocalypse Dreams in a composition of mine once. shit happens.

anyway. the track is lovely. the harmonies at the end are done with an AI voice transfer of Rhys' own vocal takes. pat flegel's been feminizing his voice for years now with a Voice Box, but it's cool to hear what's possible in front. another edge-case for the no-AI-in-art absolutists.

i really admire this band's efforts over the last decade. since tripwires, and the mythical 'album written on a napkin' days, they've been doing the hard work of writing, saying, sounding, figuring out how to transition from the A section to the B section, for 4 albums and an EP. rhys's solo project, astrel k (see a previous thing i like), also exists, in this world, where the economics of being a band trying to create something sensitive, caring, and true are so fucked. i'm grateful, and very stoked to see them again when they play in montreal.