mom
Little Brite
(ARTMOA-007)

2008.8.6 release
format: cd, album w/video track
Produced By Joel North, Bruce Blay

 

Tracklist:

01. skipping stones
02. a pebble garden
03. josh likes me
04. sleep whale
05. airplane arms
06. little brite
07. holding on
08. dreamy
Video Track
09. sleep whale 

 

Joel North and Bruce Blay, both 23-year old Denton residents, have been fortunate enough to share a common ground with their love of acoustic stringed instruments, echo, field recordings, obscure instructional records, sounds from films, tape reels, and subtle electronics. These are some of the elements that provide the texture to their flowing/spiraling sound structures. For the past year and a half, Joel and Bruce have been making music under the name Mom.

Post-rock/Experimental? Folktronica? Electroacoustic/Trance? Old world/new world organic/inorganic minimalist chamber pop nostalgic futurism? Enough already―call it mom. Explaining the hypnotic musical meditations of the Denton-based ensemble known as mom is a self-defeating exercise in genre mash-up, since one listen easily overwhelms a thousand words. Or for that matter, the absence of a thousand words, since the instrumental duo builds its evocative narratives with a purely musical alphabet. For 23-year-old guitarist/cellist Joel North and 23-year-old violinist/sequence programmer Bruce Blay, the melding of traditional live acoustic sources with vanguard electronic processing is the most natural thing in the world. Bruce observes that “We’re very big fans of that feeling of nostalgic futurism… the futurism of old times, 1950’s futurism sort of.” Joel completes the thought, adding, “It’s like something organic taken into a non-organic context, but you can still see it’s organic on the surface.” Sharing some spiritual kinship with bands like Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Sigur Ros, and The Album Leaf, mom’s website acknowledges the influence of “maternity, nourishment, ultra sound, epidurals, midwives, musique concrete…,” and in conversation they add iconoclastic sculptor Andy Goldsworthy to the melange.

mom's burbling tonal minimalism, evidenced on their recently released debut CD, little brite, is the result of an intuitive collaborative rapport between the two, who first met at UNT five years ago; Bruce is a Philosophy major and Joel is pursuing a Liberal Arts Associates Degree. Now roommates, the give-and-take of composing and recording together can even be accomplished separately. “I might sit down and work on a track and then say, ‘hey man, I’m going to work, do you want to look at this?’” Bruce says. Joel can take over the composition at that point with an implicit carte-blanch. “We normally don’t talk about anything that we’re trying to do,” the guitarist explains. “We’ve found that’s the best way to get the best results.” While the sounds of their guitar, cello and violin may vary from unadulterated to heavily processed, the sequences realized with Bruce’s Akai MPC2000XL draw on a palette of homemade sampled sources, as opposed to factory presets. About 90% of mom’s pet sounds are organic, and include music boxes, ice in water, guitar, and tape machine noises; Bruce’s holy grail of samples is a bell choir, and the quest continues.

Despite the fact that both musicians are self-taught, their skill sets are remarkable. Joel’s fingerpicking prowess is impressive, as is his lexicon of alternate tunings and percussive effects that occasionally evoke the timbre of a hammered dulcimer. The six songs on little brite cohere seamlessly, creating a series of musical postcards, travelogues at once exotic and familiar. Conjuring a universe whose ancient forbears might include Steve Reich, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Eno’s looping ambiences, Brit-folk guitarist Bert Jansch, gamelan ensembles and Hindustani hand percussion, the wall-to-wall beauty of the proceedings is anything but reverential ear candy. Fluently engaging, melodically rewarding, and sophisto-whimsical, mom’s cerebrally atmospheric marriage of the Luddite and techno worlds makes for essential listening. “I think it reaches a wide range of people,” Joel adds. “My mom and dad like it―she listens to it everyday while she’s sewing.” And mom knows best.

RIYL: The Books, Eluvium, State River Widening, Rachel's and Sigur Ros
Reviews:

Norman Records
I'm amazed there's not been a band called Mom before..... All this time... so so many bands... so so many artists and none of 'em called Mom. Just proves it can still be done... Anyway Little Brite is the name of their album and it's on the smashing Japanese label Moamoo who've released previous goodness by Verbose, Pub, Random Number, Maps And Diagrams etc. What an odd beast this is. It's primarily electro acoustic music.... ie acoustic guitars and electronics. It reminds me a lot of The Books and State River Widening. I reckon anyone into both of the artists is gonna love this. Track 4 (Sleep Whale) has these awesomely miserable sounding violins in it which are gut wrenching (I love a bit of that) All the while there's ample tinkling, plucking and niceness going on in the background. Damned this is a great album. It's a hard one to sum up to be honest, it just needs listening to..... The Books and State River widening though.... Defo.