FEATURE: Blondes - Swisher
RVNG Intl. - 2013
There was not always room for beauty in techno; dictating a rigid cyclical structure and tight rhythm, modern techno is often hardly melodic at all. Boundaries between genres are often blurry however, as New York producer duo Blondes, artists Sam Haar and Zach Steinman, create an effective blend of house melodies and a technoid motion.
Like last year’s eponymous album on RVNG Intl., new album Swisher reveals the duo masters of careful yet unpredictable layering of live instruments, big drum computers and a broad range of lo-fi filters. Rather than programming their music beforehand on a DAW, Haar and Steinman often record a track in one sitting. This results in very spacious and adventurous sounds: tracks on their debut album were seldom under 7 minutes long - a trend continued on the vocal-less Swisher - but thanks to the organic flow of the composition, always interesting. Tracks like Bora Bora don’t feel like a linear progression of bar after bar, but rather like a sonic experiment of layers.
Haar and Steinman don’t shy away from writing warm, almost saccharine melodies: Andrew and Poland feature windblowing synths, arpeggiated falls and rounded clavichord lines. However, somehow, the duo are always in control, never letting the music become too sentimental. Interlude Clasp is not really one: with a heavy focus on the beats, the track raises the tension for the excellent title-track with its extensive zigzags around its beats. Closing track Elise is an absolute stunner. A strong kick and brushy hi hats lead the way for a warm beat and a strangely compatible jitterous synth. In the end, it is not the melody that steals the show: with Swisher, Blondes prove that, despite the vibrant colours, it is rhythm that keeps everything together.
Special mention goes to Greg Zifcak’s visuals of both the complete album as the individual tracks. Like no other, he captures the music’s ideas and molds it into a delicious reel of psychelic analogue distortions. Watch on YouTube
