FREEwilliamsburg: Demander, Jan Jelinek, and New England Roses

Music Reviews by John Rickman

Demander - EP (Triplicate)
www.demandernyc.com

The debut five-tracker by New York City's Demander proves that small bands can have a big rock sound. You can hear this trio's punchy exclamation-pop trying to break free from the modest moorings of its producers' mixing consoles. The recording, intimate and unpretentious, presents the group's sound laid bare in a way that reveals the intricacies of their instrumentation—and while it ultimately leaves you wanting more, it only hints at the strength of the band as a unified whole.

Comparisons to Sleater-Kinney and The Breeders have been thrown about, but Demander walks more of a knife's edge. Stylistically, the band has a strong, stripped-down blues-punk sound that is more accurately comparable to The Pretenders or PJ Harvey. Karen Corrêa proudly prefers to play the bass guitar's lowest notes and her vocals are equally as rich and robust. It's a perfect match for Sivan Harlap's rhythmic thunder and it's this pair's ongoing tug of war for dominance that makes the group's simple guitar, bass, and drums lineup so interesting.

Corrêa detonates each lyrical line like dynamite in time with the crack and crash of the drums. The latter of which propels the poetry of "Porte Cochere" forward: "In speaking thought is half-murdered / In words love is inverted / With virtue you half-flirted, but / Insecurities were re-asserted." Both Corrêa and Harlap apparently have musical roots that predate this new project and their maturity shows. Jared Scott's modest-but-solid guitar riffage is a nice compliment and has a slight rockabilly twang to it. As a unit, Demander's music is immediate and powerful, and like most New Yorkers has enough volition behind it to rise above any limitation and attract the attention it deserves.

Jan Jelinek
Kosmischer Pitch
(~Scape)

Much of the best laptop-created, minimal techno comes from Germany. Producers from Berlin and Cologne in particular have pioneered a distinctive deep house sound that combines simple electronic rhythms and soulful synthesizers with grainy textural environments and Jamaican dub-influenced production. The style has since influenced hip-hop, ambient music, conceptual art, and everything in between.

And as with anything marginally trendy, it's gotten to be a bit played out, as most "tech-house" and "digital glitch" practitioners are content to stick to formula and rarely come up with anything new and exciting. Jan Jelinek, on the other hand, always manages to prove there are no boundaries to any kind of music and that "style" is all in the mind anyways.

On Kosmischer Pitch, his third full-length for the ~Scape label, Jelinek takes his jazzy, loop-infused mini-funk in a slightly different direction. His instrumentals still have a jazzy, blunted bounce, but the music is more dense than usual and contains few overtly phat beats or mood-enhancing bass lines. Instead, Jelinek aims for the sublime by focusing in on the richness of his synthesized and sampled sounds and the natural rhythms they create when they collide.

The first track, "Universal Band Silhouette," is a heady, slow burner that leads with subtle layers of vibrating drone, backwards guitar, and brushed snare; whereby the arrangement crescendos into a rocking, mid-tempo bop. Jelinek allows the hypnotic quality of the sounds to sink in, drawing out the rising tension from both the resultant harmonies and the tempestuous rhythm.

The effect throughout is that of being in an induced state. On "Lithiummelodie 1," Jelinek delicately simmers resonating guitar chords and bubbling digital drone into a mesmerizing stew of sound. Just as a tight groove is added to spice things up, the sounds boil over and segue into "Planeten in Halbtrauer," a pressure-cooked remix of its predecessor that huffs and puffs as it slowly builds steam.

More than once, however, Jelinek transforms intensity into beauty. "Vibraphonspulen" is a meditative relaxer that sounds more like a live recording than a tapestry of samples and is quite unlike anything he's attempted before. The last track, "Morphing Leadgitarre," is an extrasensory number that takes the listener well beyond the chill out zone and into an almost dream-like state. In fact, Jelinek damn near reaches nirvana.

New England Roses
"Face Time With Son"
(DoggPony)
MP3's: All for the Night | The Good Wife

JD Samson, Sarah Shapiro, and Brendan Fowler are New England Roses, an inspired trio of old college chums and musical collaborators who, before graduating and going on to play in such bands as Barr and Le Tigre, sound like they engaged in free love together between classes. Indeed, their new full-length, "Face Time With Son," has a naked, dorm room production quality to it that reveals a curious kind of shared intimacy. It also exposes the limits of the trio's musical talent, which is only occasionally redeemed by their youthful exuberance and whimsical approach to songwriting.

The proceedings, which employ little instrumentation throughout, begin with a lone male voice: "These days my friends arrive on planes, but soon we will be barefoot babies, walking, for yes." The a cappella gives way to a spare, plucked bass and a bored beat box on 'All for the Night,' a pensive number that estranges the listener from the point of it all, which appears to be known only to the group's individual members. 'Dancing Nancies' and 'Blood Blood Blood' are also somewhat alienating, alternately extolling existential hopelessness and the comforts of sensuality.

On 'Kids in the City,' which appears half way through the recording, the three introduce themselves, whip up a block-rockin' beat, and finally get around to addressing the sexual revolution they're engaged in: "We are the kids, the kids in the city, losing our virginity / All the different genders, we put them in a blender / This is our favorite way to feel!" On 'Candy,' electronic handclaps and cowbell compel the trio to call out: "How much do you want it? / Cuz wanting it is all about wanting it / I'm diggin' on you / You're diggin' on me / We're diggin' on we / You've got to find your friends."

Such blushing is fleeting, however, as the trio reverts back to its reflective, pensive ways for the latter half of the be-in, reminding us again we are "broken animals" whose sexually charged bodies can only be satiated by brooding synthesizers, brushed cymbals, and lilting female vocals. New England Roses are keen to share their feelings about life, sex, and death, but ultimately confuse and confound in doing so musically.

— John Rickman

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