Brooklyn's Stars Like Fleas swell to involve no fewer than 21 participants on latest album The Ken Burns Effect, and their music can borrow from at least as many genres: plaintive post-rock, squawking free jazz, ambient drone, country, folk, noise-- you name it. Pitchfork's Grayson Currin writes: "'Karma's Hoax', which opens the album after a collagist introduction, pits skittering drums and squawking bass clarinet and baritone saxophone beneath beautiful dream-like vocals, pedal steel moans, and patient piano chords. The drums and horns temporarily overrun the song's softer side, slapping at the theme like Albert Ayler letting 'Spirits Rejoice' with Fred Frith and Joey Baron."
The video, which is indeed not safe for work (unless your bosses are cool with Frontal Nudity Thursdays), also alternates between dream-like and frenetic. Much of the clip focuses on a man lying naked with two women on a mattress, their limbs artfully entwined, and we also see a woman singing bathed in heavenly light. But fully clothed figures also dance vigorously in a strobe-lit room amid peals of feedback.
[from The Ken Burns Effect; out now on Hometapes]
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Posted
Jul 31 2008, 03:50 PM
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Pitchfork Media - Today