Fresh from our recent Oakland roundtable with Moon Glyph and fellow indie imprints of Father/Daughter and Gold Robot, the DIY vanguards committed to upholding the banner of the self-made artist by giving us the self-titled cassette from quartet Sativa Flats. The special strain-named band was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in the Turf Club's basement of parlor-side curios, the Clown Lounge. From this subterranean layer of Midwest comforts, taxidermy displays, and wood panel-framed portraits of extensive forestry landscapes, the four piece of Chris Rose, Scott Watson, Bennett Johnson, and Neil Weir took their downstairs song sketches over to Neil's studio, Old Blackberry Way, for further sharpening and tuning. Sativa Flats' notable members from Robust Worlds, Heavy Deeds, Vampire Hands, Synchrocyclotron, Daughters of the Sun, Wavepool, The Chambermaids, Pony Trash build their own flats and forts that explore keys and electric currents that come alive on the following featured songs, “Internet” and “Cha Cha”.
From across the gluten fields, farmland plains, and waves of grain, those keys that compose “Internet” glow like dial-tones converted to DSL hook-ups. A “playing for keeps” mantra can be heard in a single that doubles as a futuristic suspense thriller audio mood supplement.
Keeping those aforementioned key choices sustaining in harmonic resonance, Sativa Flats' “Cha Cha” assuages the spirit and body while softly carrying the listener through tranquil mindscapes. The rhythmic relationship of bass to Neil's programmed percussion does its own kind of cha-cha-cha as Chris's faint vocals get caught in the keyboard vacuum machines, courtesy of Bennett and Scott's meticulous blueprint patterns of tonal frequencies.
Sativa Flats' self-titled cassette is available now from Moon Glyph.
