Atmosphere and Genre

At the church show last Friday (write up coming!), I picked up an album of the Refo:mation (i.e., the church-minus-marty) and – bonus! – was given a free download of four songs from Hammock's Chasing After Shadows...Living with the Ghosts LP. Holy crap. Not sure what this type of music is called, but it’s absolutely beautiful atmospheric “rock”, feedback a-buzzing in the background, chiming guitars soaring above it all, the backbeat driving it all home. You know – like the best church music! But while the church have really foarged their own unique path – combining elements of glam, Pink Floyd, Byrds jangle rock, and aching 80’s sensitivity into one thick, hearty stew – Hammock appears to be in a different tradition. The first thing that came to mind was Kevin Shields’ solo work, but I suppose that you could call it emo (the tinny vocals on "You Lost the Starlight in Your Eyes" do not help their case).

I’m really not sure what to call this music. The genre listed in iTunes genre is "indie", which is so vague as to be meaningless. I’ve changed it to "Ambient Rock". If you have a chance, give it a listen and let me know what you think.

Anyways, listening to this album got me to thinking about how much I value atmosphere in my music. To me, the sound of a song is everything. It’s why I like Sonic Youth, Suzanne Vega, the various electronic artists I listen to from Boards of Canada to Aphex Twin to Innerfuze, and it’s absolutely what draws me to the church. So it was only natural that I’d be drawn to Steve Kilbey’s work with Martin Kennedy. Kelly gave me their first album – Unseen Music Unheard Words – for Christmas, and unfortunately we tried to listen to it in the car on the way home and the ambient car noise and kid distractions did not do the album justice. But once I got the headphones on: oh my. Silky sweet and oh. So. Chill. Kennedy is a member of All India Radio a band that Wired has touted as a mashup of “DJ Shadow, Tortoise, and Thievery Corporation with the instantly recognizable guitar soundtracking of Ennio Morricone and Angelo Badalameni.” Sign me up!

While the album is infused with SK’s personality and obsessions – death, the cosmos, alternate realities, etc. – the music gives the tunes a keyboard ambience that the guitar-based church just doesn’t aim for. It’s just different: the church, as mellow as it might get, has an edge that’s an inevitable result of the tensions of the personalities involved. But SK and MK’s stuff searches out the grooves and rides them home. Occasionally, this lack of edge is to the toons detriment, but most of the time SK’s master of melody pulls you in, and the music’s subtleties – and those grooves! – keep you listening. Listen to the muted drum machine in the background of some tunes (like “”Uh I Donno”) or the subtle electonica touches on others. All these details build up a tapestry that really does reward close listening. And it’s not all couch music either: SK has a way of adding a really subtle edge to the stuff. For instance, “Sumer” (off their 2011 release White Magic is still very chill, but the small details give an incredible energy: the drum fills that pick up intensity as the song continues, SK’s angry vocals, the echoes of the chorus as the song continues, and that one verse where the entire thing is run through some sort of electric treatment so that it sounds like Tron’s singing for one short glorious moment. (To get a sense of what it’s like, you can download a free track from their website here. Limited time only!)

So, in short: ambience rules. Note the title of this blog. I’ll close with an antidote about how much this type of music means to me. I know that now that I’m a father twice over I’ve become much more sentimental then I ever was, but I never expected that I’d spend a Sunday running unfortunately necessary errands in the corporate wastelands of the Natick Mall (er, “Collection” that is) while softly singing SK & MK’s “All Is One” to Mr. Trey as I navigated my way through SUV strollers and people searching out Presidents day sales. If you ever doubted my SK obsession, let your fears be laid to rest!