yoo doo right, Fly Pan Am, and The Wheel
yoo doo right
Don’t Think You Can Escape Your Purpose // Mothland
Don’t Think You Can Escape Your Purpose! What’s your purpose? Who do you serve? My purpose is obviously to listen to yoo doo right, because I can’t escape this unrelenting torrent of staggering sound! The Montreal kraut rockers were “determined to push the barriers of guitar music” and the result is an album as dense as it is beguiling. By using a blend of overwhelming sonic mass and unique, nuanced textures, the 3-piece band created immense walls of sound that carry on the tradition of 90s Canadian post-rock while also building moments of psychedelic spaced-out bliss that take the mood in unexpected and compelling places.
They focused on shoegaze and krautrock themes to build the foundation for a spiraling and expansive post-rock effort, but mixed in an array of psychedelic grooves that worm their way into your psyche, disarming you for the impending enormity that always returns to wreak havoc on whatever comfort the groove may provide. It’s a mesmerizing blend of spacey psychedelic celebrations and incantations that are unable to escape the heft of the shoegaze fury that will inevitably swallow them whole. It’s a dichotomy between glimmers of hope against a backdrop of textures that feel as expansive and heavy as the universe.
Creating music “tied together by an overarching sense of urgency” to “push the barriers of guitar music” was their lodestar and improv was the horse that carried them. Using an approach that relished in spontaneous moments of chaos allowed them to seize the raw magic of musical intuition. Pairing their instincts with anachronistic, sometimes malfunctioning equipment elevated their sound from a forgettable post-rock racket into a unique and engaging work.
If this album has a purpose, it is to engulf its audience in sound. Not only is it impossible to escape its sonic heft, it also continually reminds you that any glimmers of light will eventually be overwhelmed by far greater forces. Comforting grooves ebb and flow throughout, but overall the band builds walls of sound perpetually until the climax in the final moments of “Black Moth”, with bass guitars down-tuned to oblivion until they have the weight of a black hole. We are unable to avoid the black hole’s gravitational pull forever; psychedelic escapism can only go so far. Eventually we are overtaken, pulled in, and then, silence – our purpose, fulfilled.
Surely there are plenty of themes and metaphors to be dug out of the moods they convey, but I’m not here to decide what the album should mean to you. Just remember this when you spin it for the first time: Don’t Think You Can Escape Your Purpose!
- Clay Geddert
Fly Pan Am
Frontera // Constellation Records
One of my favourite things about experimental electronic music is its indulgence in the butchering of conventional music norms. It’s a realm with no restriction to the standard four chords and a catchy chorus. It’s a form of artistic expression with an incomprehensible combination of sounds to meticulously piece together. So it’s no surprise that I found myself interested in the newest release from Montreal based experimental rock group Fly Pan Am, Frontera.
Frontera was originally created as a soundtrack to a contemporary dance piece where Fly Pan Am performed as the live band for the dance production. They toured in early 2020 before the pandemic threw a brick wall at them. While in lockdown, Fly Pan Am managed to record the soundtrack.
Frontera is a selection of abstract and ambient tracks that invoke the influence of industrial metal. The album begins with its first track, “Grid / Wall”, which opens with a moist, unstable, ancient soundscape. As the beat begins to roll in, the song unfolds over its almost eight minute runtime, revealing several layers of heavily distorted synthesizers among other instruments.
Two techniques in music that I personally love are ending a song abruptly, and songs that fade into one another seamlessly. Frontera delivers both, first the seamless fade between the sixth and seventh tracks, “Body Pressure” and “Fences”, and finally the abrupt ending during the destructive, chaotic final track of the album, “Frontier”.
The album is mostly vocal-less, with the exceptions I noticed being the two part track “Parkour” and “Parkour 2”. The former contains fuzzed out screams, while the latter features a melodically haunting choir. I remember them sticking out as I heard them amongst the instrumentals, which are an electronic powerhouse.
With an arsenal of synths and two decades of experience under their belt, Fly Pan Am presents an experimental album dense with distorted noise, supportive bass lines, and industrial drum beats. It’s a must listen for anyone itching to indulge in their chaotic side.
- Brandon Kruze
The Wheel
Self-Titled // Independent
Dear boomer dads frettin’ on the ‘net that there just isn't anyone making “real music” anymore - Take a dose of the brand new self-titled debut by Calgary’s The Wheel and please STFU. Recorded entirely on vintage era analog equipment and sounding very much like a sun-drenched offering from the laid back Laurel Canyon songwriter scene circa 1972, this ambitious debut contains all the hallmarks of the post-60’s West Coast FM radio sound that old hippies fetishize to this day.
In fact, this whole album very much gives off the vibe of a day spent digging through record crates at the vintage store, finding forgotten gems of a bygone era and soaking up the influence of a gentler, mellower time, redolent of incense and hashish resin. It’s no coincidence that songwriter Patrick Whitten spent time as an employee of legendary Calgary music shop Recordland; fans of vintage music will find an absolute treasure trove of references to classic 60’s/70’s touchstones buried within this meticulously crafted debut.
Followers of Calgary’s roots and psychedelic music scene will recognize a lot of the key players here from a plethora of well-known local bands, and it shows in the level of musicianship that the individual band members have all put in their time in the trenches; on almost every song the band is given the opportunity to stretch out instrumentally, and the players display a real measure of intuition and restraint in their performances. In general, there isn’t a ton of ego evident here, just a seeming dedication to serving Whitten’s songcraft with tasteful country-rock arrangements that favour the meandering twin guitar interplay of Mike Corbiell and Jamey Lougheed, (Bitterweed Draw, Copperhead) and the absolutely sterling pedal-steel work of the band’s ace-in-the-hole Wayne Garrett (Surf Kitties). It's all rounded out by the fluid bass of Brian Maude(Laser Cake), and the intuitive drumming of Steve MacDonald (Shuffalo).
Ultimately though the main hook here is Patrick Whitten’s vibrant tenor voice, which one could be forgiven for mistaking for Neil Young’s in a blind test. Happily, the level of songwriting does a good job of living up to the expectations that one envisions upon hearing it; there are a number of really powerful hooks for the discerning listener, and the art of crafting a memorable chorus with powerful lyrical reinforcement certainly isn’t lost on Whitten. There are several examples of songs like the brightly infectious single "Worry Doll" that I could envision finding a comfortable place on the FM dial of yesteryear, and the overall production value often elevates the better parts of the album to the level of the sublime. There’s also a genuine show of emotive passion in the vocal performance, and one very much gets the sense that, at the very least, this is a group that 100% believes in the work that they’re doing. The fact that they managed to make a debut album this intricate, cohesive and sonically precise without the backing of a label proves it, and it’s fair to say that whether or not they follow it up, they’ve safely secured their legacy on this auspicious debut LP.
