
Phondupe – Silo
As early as the 1950s, folks yielding guitars and their associates, manically trying to keep time by banging the drums, were greeted as apostles of the impending Apocalypse, spewing out truths that could decay the heart of millions.
While it’s natural to assume that the stories of our most challenging days would be related by mysterious, psychedelic-poets mumbling over simple guitar chords, music and technology have produced something much more ferocious and hard-hitting.
Electronic sounds have come a long way from the synth-heavy pop that dominated MTV in the early 1980s. Few other soundscapes produced by men and women tinkering on strings or attempting to keep time come close to what the carefully crafted production of relentless electro sounds can produce.
In the hands of Phondupe on the new single Silo, it makes for a merciless avalanche of danceable, glitzy grooves. Meant to express the fear and confusion felt by many during the past year, Silo is a barbarous dance number that brings us closer to our fragile selves.
MAZEPPA – Arms
I can tell you with near certainty that, for a bizarre reason I have no way of explaining, the spirit that informed the mysterious psychedelic rock spirit of the 1960s has acquired some nifty production tools has modernized its style and has packed and moved to Israel.
The characteristics of this Middle Eastern dream-rock involve well-orchestrated songs, large canvases for the dreamscapes thought up by the artists, and, almost always, very well executed playing.
MAZEPPA’s Arms bings to mind chemical-explorers like Morrison’s The Doors, the sparse, insular sounds of 80s groups like This Mortal Coil, and even some modern tricks. The instrumental of this track twists and turns as if in a trance, but the vocals keep command of it as if holding a ceremony. There’s a new batch of mysterious desert rock sounds about.