Three Music Thingz with Architrave
Oh WOW, it's another rendition of Three Music Thingz, the blogseries where I ask musicians for three thingz that are essential to their music-making.
Today we have Architrave! The New York-based synth-pop duo (Jennifer Maher Coleman and Paul Coleman) released their fourth album, Panic Joy, in June. It's a vibe: austere but vibrant beats, magisterial low ends, synthesizers that coalesce into formal structures and glow softly like lights through windows.
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My favorite songs on the album are the acid-y "Parthogenesis" and the lush, New Age style closer "Cruel Tsunami." If you like that special ICE COLD style of bass line...the kind of bass line that makes you imagine one of those frigid Northeast winds, whistling through alleyways, gathering strength until it chills the everliving shit out of any tender skin you might have left exposed...you will like Architrave's music. Brr!!
Jennifer from the band shared her three music thingz...below, behold:
Epic synths
One of the places where my influences and tastes intersect with Paul’s is our shared childhood love for the prog-rock band Genesis. I was in absolute awe of Tony Banks' massive, mysterious melodies and chord progressions. In general, my most magical childhood memories are ecstatic revelations around synthesizer lines in music. I write what I long to hear, and would love for our songs to have that effect on another human being.
Kinetic beats
I’ve been a house/techno/breakbeat dj for 30 years, and my style has always been to combine a wide variety of rhythms within each set. So when I produce our music, I draw from the dance genres I love - drum and bass and breaks in particular. My sense is that this sort of range sets us outside of the traditional synth-pop aesthetic.
Humor in the darkness
I love it when melodrama is layered with a joke. A couple of examples from our work—"Lorem Ipsum," from our third album, in which the instrumental itself references Mozart’s requiem but the lyrics combine traditional Latin requiem lyrics ("dies illa lacrimosa") with the fake Latin-esque gibberish ("lorem ipsum dolor sit amet:) used to fill space when designing websites. Definitely check out the insane video we made for that one!
Another is "Parthenogenesis," from Panic Joy, which has only a few lyrics: "Be your own man, somebody’s got to do it!" It was inspired by online excitement around Charlotte the stingray, who seemed to have become pregnant without a mate in her aquarium. I find it incredibly funny that this is the premise behind a rather dark, menacing, almost ebm-type track.
Thank you Architrave! Listen to Panic Joy and check out their link aggregation.
And thanks for reading I Enjoy Music! If you like it, tell a friend.
