Indie Brooklyn-based duo Nate Amos and Rachel Brown unleash a highly original fusion of experimental art-rock, pop, and shoegaze, mixing musical dynamism with the vocally deadpan abstract through thematic portal of otherworldly science fiction. From short instrumental opener One Small Step, which sounds like outer space pond life, you know you’re entering a different world. The syncopated fuzz rock and switching proggy styles of Life Styles is instantly arresting, with pacy riffs and transportive strange lyrics: “Tick tick, you're alive, sunlit sick sky scraped by bright eyed short sight online for thy / Cathedrals are built unbuilt rebuilt, unwavering guilt/ Pools of rain heaven spilt, subject to tilt / I'm unfulfilled, i'm in a beautiful place/ Yeah, it's so sad in this beautiful place/ I need you here right now in this beautiful place / Can you resurrect a cloud?/ Can you claim it's fate?”. The woozy, dreamlike shoegazey chorus in between these agile musical changes has some echoes of Deerhoof. Nights In Amor mixes a zestful handclap joy between the arrhytthmic whirl, and Brown’s listlessly deadpan delivery in a corrupt, confusing universe: “Dog days, epochBankrupt on top, yeah, you won, you stole the sun / Who's got me? / Believe that the future is free/ No fire, no world, and it hurts, I don't know/ Fight me, I burn brighter.” Spaceship summons some cleverly psychedelic stop-start, jittery musical creations by Amos, with reversed guitar riffs and other indeterminately strange sounds, and helicopter-like percussion. Another standout, Playing Classics, with an anxiously insistent hi-hat and a simple four-note riff, builds into an odd utopian dream in some far off disco with a fabulously shambling piano part. “Look, I'm concerned as a matter of fact / Contact, contact, all this shattered impact … We've got modern idols for the end of an age / Shake ten/ There's no, no real life, TV / I just wanna dance, architecture no rent/ Shake five / There's no lost future, baby.” Refraction the eyes and ears - wonderfully weird, original work. Out on Matador Records.
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