Not content enough to premiere the new All Tiny Creatures “A Lone Sound” single alone; Thomas Wincek proudly presents A Lone Sound Mixtape courtesy of Hometapes as a supplementary taster of the upcoming Dark Clock album available in June. Wincek is joined by fellow Volcano Choir members Andrew Fitzpatrick, Matt Skemp, along with Ben Derickson, where new creatures and creations are constructed through closer and newer looks and listens to the day to day human made technologies that we take for granted. In this approach, the Wisconsin quartet overlooks nothing as new musical species are crafted through ATC's ways of alchemistic discoveries that are both bright, dark, big, small, beautiful, fearsome, transitional and alive.
The opening title single from the tape, “A Lone Sound” is the achieved bright pop potential of synthesized fun. “We tried to imagine what it must have been like writing music using primarily a Fairlight CMS, one of the earliest, most primitive samplers”, Thomas describes the song, putting the group in the director's chair of their own Hounds Of Love compressed into a micro-synth-symphony of life's changes that reminds us, “it's not up to you”. Just as the Fairlight CMS changed the game in the early 80s, the Midwestern magicians return to that same technological concept of intrigue that Kate Bush found with the new ways of discovering expression where songwriting is designed to spin a metaphysical soul for an otherwise godless motherboard. Through this process, Wincek is able to stir a new pop vehicle of change through new beliefs, fresher values that the noughties never brought, 1990s opuses forgot, and 1980s new romantic expressionism only began to hint at.
The extended mix of “Hypertext” conveys the binary to server impulse dialogues that exist within the linked-in world of HREFs connecting idea to new idea. Here those referenced pages through color illuminated and underlined digital text are given life through sounds that grumble and gurgle like digital amphibians and reptiles, hanging about on a lily padded pond of keyed components. Where the luminous energy of “A Lone Sound” bounces between the array of sampled presets, those keys become the heavy rain clouded backdrop dwelling for a host of nocturnal, moniker referencing gathering of All Tiny Creatures created within the mix.
Rising out of the still and croaking pond is the summoning of the synth alliterative scanner, “Wireframe”. While at times sounding like a synthesizer experiment, Thomas, Andrew, Matt, and Ben provide a bit by bit soundscore for code writers and programmers everywhere. “Wireframe” is the sound of a church chorus of organ synthetics that loop in constructive builds that imagine three dimensional figures being drawn and rendered through computer assisted programs of original, encoded DNA. The hypnotic nature and bass synth spinning undercurrent provide what could be a sound score to make code instructional videos interesting for all audiences that include experts, intermediates and novices.
The tape's closer, “Glass Bubbles (Beaunoise Remix)” struts with zaps of controlled key tones that dart across speaker channels that sometimes move in skyward motions like evaporating liquid. In the ways that lingering emphases is placed on synths, the lyrical delivery stays liked breathy, hushed whispers amid glassy oceanic fixations. As vocal and keys bond amid the drama of the high seas, the obsessions that live beyond the harbors remain, “staring out the window and watch the ships that sail”. Like a weathered fisherman holding on to old love letters and pillow talk promises; the possibility and future of potential fulfillment is wrapped in the cold salt water kisses of, “she said lay by me and we'll catch the next wave”.
All Tiny Creatures: A Lone Sound Mixtape
1. A Lone Sound
2. Hypertext (Extended Mix)
3. Wireframe
4. Glass Bubbles (Beaunoise Remix)
All Tiny Creatures' upcoming album Dark Clock will be available June 25 from Hometapes.
