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Usually when new things come in, i download the free tracks to my Zune and listen to them for a while before deciding what i want to hear more of. Lefse Records sent me the track It Goes Down, and i was doing some pointless task at my day job when it came on the Zune, and i stopped and just listened. Then i played it again. Then i emailed the label rep to see if i could hear the rest of the EP.
This is good stuff. Tape Deck Mountain are a band from San Diego who make wandering, psychedelic, shoegazer tunes. I hear some Slowdive, the mellower moments of SIANspheric, and Landing all swirled together in their sound. Now, those are all things i really enjoy, and indeed this EP has been on heavy rotation at the PostLibyanCave of late. There is just over fifteen minutes worth of music in four songs here, so let me go over each.
The first tune is P.I., and it is three minutes of echoed, slightly off focus and fuzzy shoegaze. On the chorus, the guitars seem to moan in an almost ecstatic manner.
It Goes Down is even better. It starts with a staticky see-sawing of guitar, faint and far away, then an acoustic strums over top accompanied by some light drumming. A voice pops in, far away and lost in an echo, almost like the vocalist is underwater. And then, on the chorus, everyone cranks it up a notch, channeling the shoegaze gods of past years as they stomp on their distortion pedals. Hells yeah!
Tape Deck Mountain tone it down a bit for Trevor, which is lethargic, almost like something off of Codeine's Frigid Stars. The voice is high-pitched and the drums drive this along at a wandering pace, as guitars grind away.
Finally we have the title track itself. The guitar here is strummed, chiming, and clearer than on the other tracks. The voice is still highly echoed though. The song grows slowly, adding on more layers of voice and guitar until it builds a dense, yet lovely, fog.
This is some amazing stuff. Fans of psychedelic shoegaze need to check this band out. I am already looking forward to seeing them at SxSW this year. Look for a live review to follow later.
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