Writing about new and up-and-coming music can be an exasperating experience. Each day new bands crop up on MySpace and various blogs, via e-mail and word-of-mouth recommendations. Keeping up with this onslaught of tunes would be a full-time job if someone were willing to pay, but even if you do it out of a love for music and a desire to discover something new, the experience can be disheartening. Bands are picked up, dissected, re-blogged, criticized, canonized, and discarded all in an afternoon.

I found myself in a particularly negative space a few months ago, and quit writing about music altogether. Keeping up with all of the latest finds is one thing, but when those finds are failing to turn you on musically, the situation is dire. At the nadir of this funk I discovered Caboladies and, to put it plainly, my faith was restored. I first encountered the duo live. Seeing Chris Bush and Eric Laham face each other over that classic indicator of live electronics wonder — a table overflowing with gear — I had high hopes even before the music started.

Although loosely grouped with contemporary synth revivalists like Oneohtrix Point Never (with whom they released a split cassette) and Sam Goldberg, Caboladies’ sound has much more affinity with blasted abstract electronics than cascading waves of synth wank. The resulting sound is surprisingly beat-oriented, the physicality of the music potent enough to translate effectively on record. As showcased on their recent Live Anywhere LP, the sound of Caboladies is as passionate as any traditional rock music, nullifying any lingering notions (yes, they’re still out there) about the soullessness of electronic music. Even more appealing, the group’s sound is thoughtfully mixed, each element clear and distinct, avoiding the pervasive lo-fi murk that homogenizes much contemporary underground electronic work.

The snappily-named “Promise Ring Tone” is from an upcoming full-length on Students of Decay. The track is a distillation of the qualities that define Caboladies’ sound. Beginning with high-pitched squawks and squeals over a placid ambient background, the track cycles through a catalog of whirrs and whooshes, propelled by an elusive, internal momentum. “Promise Ring Tone” achieves the superhuman, making conjuring beauty from chaos and disparate sonic elements sound effortless. The result is a compulsively listenable marriage of songcraft with vigorous electronic wizardry.

Caboladies, “Promise Ring Tone” (Renewable Destination, Students of Decay)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Altered Zones pick of the week
(more…)