WINDOW TWINS - I'm This Tall City

Howells Trasmitter

Though The Window Twins are friends from other projects (Black Fiction and Ray’s Vast Basement), I’m This Tall City is their maiden voyage into something that sounds like dust bin electronica and star-crossed urban folk music percolating in one heady effort.

I was not surprised to find that one of The Window Twins also has a film project in the works. The music has a distinctly cinematic quality, like a noir soundtrack that drifts between lonely existentialism and low-grade mania. Spooky choruses, walls of pure noise, and nostalgic dreams adorn their disarming, off-the-cuff lyrics. Pawn shop cello and bass accompany banjos, guitars, toy xylophones, and sleigh bells; peyote-washed tracks like “Purple Flies” contrast the upbeat irony of “Poison Arrow.”

So many electronica acts are in love with technology to the point of miring themselves in effects-driven swill. The Window Twins are technophiles for sure, but marry fuzzy drum loops to wide-ranging instrumentation with seemless ease. At times, I’m This Tall City can be as challenging as anything by Ornette Coleman—I find myself going back again and again, tuning into the album’s ghostly undertow. People, this is good music. (Matthew Monte)

www.myspace.com/windowtwins

Related posts:

1. Ariel Pink | House Arrest
2. Thralls | Nemesis