I haven’t heard Ducktails lay down any warped bongo samples for quite some time now, though this number by Seattle solo flyer Secret Colors brings me back to my first Ducktails experience, which was perhaps the first time he ever performed under that name: sitting Indian-style in a Northampton yoga studio that had to be hotter than 105 degrees, trying to wrap my mind around a rhythm that sounded a bit like this one only to blank out completely inside a tornado of pentatonic flute scales. It was a time before words like “chillwave” or “hypnagogic pop” even existed, still a few years before you could log on to the internet and find dozens of blogs rattling off the manifold pseudonyms of mystery tape collagists. In those days, even if they weren’t that long ago, naming your guitar store “Pentatonic Guitars” wouldn’t have automatically made sense. It’s hard to forget those moments when new horizons open up inside the listening ear, horizons that you never even imagine will harden one day into concrete, reproducible tropes. I thank Glow of the Cube blog for the tip on Secret Colors. I don’t think “originality” is what matters in psychedelic music, anyway; it’s the feeling that an artist is always still looking.
Secret Colors, “Hammock Vibe”
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.
