"We've been here before/skin recalls the cold/dreams of ice and snow/dreams aren't any more/dreams of ice and snow/drowning in the heat of hungry souls/ in our skin..."
This is Odd Rumblings, a two-piece residing in Brooklyn U.S.A and this is their debut record. An EP of icy grace, haunted atmosphere and devastating pop-hooks pitched in the half-light of a steel sharpened moon.
Audrea Lim and Gabriel Sedgwick are creators of sparsely inhabited pop-dramas, mini epics in chorus and reverb reflected through a chromium camera obscura. Their voices always at play, always at war, twisting in the echo chamber soaring through whipcrack-snares, Badalamenti synth washes, grumbling bass pressure and liquid pads.
They talk of Thieves and Modern War; Wrong Right, Ice Floe, Princess Spoke and Mister Frosty, six tracks bathed in the cold of a dormant snowdrift. But after the Arctic bite, always comes the warm. Their melodies keep us blanketed from harm, smiling through tears. Whether that is flawless vocal harmonies stacked high in Spector Sound or the slow motion synth stabs that tickle the cochlea. Please marvel in the elegant kisses of lead cut "Ice Floe", the cavern techno-pop of "Princess Spoke" the yearning love song to "Mister Frosty" or the freezer burn heartbreak of "Wrong / Right". Music composed of so few elements rarely sounds this full, rich, luxurious, sad.
As we reach the end of 2014, the nights come closer. Our everyday becomes faster, trying to steal every minute in the light. Odd Rumblings are here as antidote to autumn>winter relentlessness, the stormy white-noise of modern life. A perfect pause for breath, but hopefully not the last.
Limited to 300 copies.