Astro Sonic — Come Closer and I'll Tell You

Improvisatory lounge rock trio Astro Sonic recently released this debut album, "Come Closer and I'll Tell You" on Hubro Records, a label which also supplied Bly de Blyant's "ABC", perhaps the closest point of reference for the sound to be found on this disk.  Though generally subdued and ambient, this 35 minute album never stays in one place for long, creating an odd pastiche effect by leaping quickly between different chilled zones, in which momentum is very slow or totally nonexistent.

The band takes the eerie, two-chord sparsitude of many an extended krautrock jam passage and sands off the distorted edges, then imbues the sound with their love of tube amps and rhodes keyboards, in a manner not dissimilar to Stereolab.  However, where Stereolab focused on layered pop melodies, Astro Sonic's sound is a purely instrumental trip, spacious to the point of near-emptiness.  The listener is pulled by the faintly insistent motorik beat through a glimmering landscape of blinking liquid phrases, setting a mood not unlike a cave or underwater area from one of the video games I played as a child.

When the band strikes a pleasant atmosphere, as they immediately do with the first track of significant length, titled "Orbiter", it's a smoky, nostalgic sluggishness, with a vintage jazz fusion tonality that should perk the ears of Chick Corea fans.  This sort of contemplative atmosphere, subtlely lonely and mysterious as it is, like faint bioluminscence in the dark, makes a perfect backdrop for many a drowsy late evening activity.  Several other tracks, such as "Shoal", make a welcome return to this space.

The weakest moments are the free jazz-ish pair of "Magnavox" and "The Shell Falls Rapidly and Splashes Into the Sea", which are mostly composed of drum fills and dissonant synthesizer bleats.  They exist in an awkward middle ground, lacking enough bite or attitude for any kind of cathartic effect, yet just off-kilter enough to upset the momentum of a pleasantly simmering mood record.

I also find myself mildly annoyed with "Analogue Karma", the keyboardist's solo piece, a track that milks a familiar E major / E minor progression for the first half, then proceeds to become a blatant rewrite of Radiohead's "Pyramid Song".  It's well performed, but too familiar.

Much like label mates Bly de Blyant, Astro Sonic have created an album that is a pleasant listen, but it is ultimately marred by the band's pre-occupation with improvisation and sparsitude: there is an arguable lack of substance or real memorable material.  The tones of the band's instruments are beautiful and the atmosphere is great, but for all their album's brevity, they do not use their time effectively; this hardly seems like the most focused effort they are capable of, and the trajectory of the album as a whole is meandering.  Whether you will enjoy this album depends on taste: if the krautrock informed dream pop of Stereolab seems too rigid and structured for you, by all means check this out, but be aware this band will just as soon discover a beautiful sequence of notes as let it dissipate to the wind.