Your average techno song has between 120 and 150 beats per
minute. Faster genres like drum'n'bass can go upwards of 180,
and slower stuff like downtempo clocks in around 96 and 112.
Tracks on Balam Acab's See Birds EP have a bpm of about 65. Put
simply, this is sloooow music. Super-sluggish pacing is one of a
few reasons Balam Acab is associated with witch house, the
gloom-pop genre pioneered by the band Salem. (Distorted hip-hop,
nods to drone and lo-fi, and eerie sonics are other common
elements.) Even though he's tied to this scene, there are plenty
of things that set Balam apart.
Balam Acab is Alec Koone, a 19-year-old college kid studying
music education in upstate New York. Unlike some of his peers,
he doesn't sing or play instruments on tracks, but builds them
instead with samples collected from the Internet. He isolates
and distorts bits of source material (say, vocal loops or beat
fragments) and smears them together in new arrangements. The
results are remarkably seamless. Take opener "See Birds (Moon)",
where a scratchy drone meets heavy, blown-out beats and a chorus
of layered vocals. The way he puts them together, a new natural
rhythm for these sounds emerges and it becomes hard to imagine
them in any other order.
Sturdy as these songs are, what's really impressive about
Koone's music is how he's able to play with contrast and draw
out emotion. Tension seems to be the key. On the eastern-tinged
"Regret Mistakes", some very light, angelic verses pull the song
upward, but when the beat comes in, all gritty and mangled, it
yanks you right back to earth. And for digital music, it can be
especially evocative. In "Big Boy", which incorporates 80s
synths and watery Animal Collective textures, he makes a sampled
kids' chorus feel weirdly somber. Next to big, threatening
beats, the children sound too young to be at this adult party,
and it gives a sense of innocence lost.
The EP is only five tracks long, and around the fourth, Koone
starts to nudge the sounds in a brighter direction. "Dream Out"
and the closer, an alternate mix of the title track, are the two
most optimistic-sounding things here. Though they lack some of
the earlier cuts' weight, they support the idea that Koone has
more to him than spooky. Sparkly sounds populate these tracks,
and the overall feeling is more dream-pop than "witch house."
There's also a heavy dub influence that runs through the album
(hear it in the sub-aquatic bass of "Big Boy"), and combined
with his penchant for loops and samples, Koone reminds me at
times of a young Noah Lennox. Can't say for now whether he has
that kind of ability, but this is a heck of an impressive first
step.
- Joe Colly, August 12, 2010
IF YOU LIKE IT, BUY IT!!!!!!
Tracklist:
1 See Birds (Moon)
2 Regret Making Mistakes
3 Big Boy
4 Dream Out
5 See Birds (Sun)
Balam_Acab-See_Birds-2011-FWYH
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