Collections of Colonies of Bees

Birds | Radium
By DEVIN KING  |  May 20, 2008
2.5 2.5 Stars
coloniesofbeesinside
If one extension of math rock is Battles’ experiments with poppy aggression, Collections of Colonies of Bees prove that the genre doesn’t have to sublimate angst into vocoded aggression. Birds keeps the twittering, quasi-African high end, chunky power chords, and pointed cymbal and snare hits that place the Bees oh-so-well in the Midwest — but the band use elongated repetition rather than quick-stop rhythmic changes to give power to their arrangements. The repetition allows for a relaxed listen — indeed, the music often borders on ambient — but Birds is only four songs, so the similarity of each track’s compositional moves becomes numbing. Light repetitive ambiance leads to specific repetitive counterpoint leads to loud over-dramatic repetition leads to a glitchy — you guessed it! — repetitive dénouement. Still, the Bees aren’t obsessed with outlasting the listener or with the instrumental theatrics that often mar the genre. There’s a lot of joy to be had here, and the band are happy to investigate pleasant moments at hand rather than hunt relentlessly for others.
Related: Sic Alps, Sincerely yours,, Luomo | Convivial, More more >
  Topics: CD Reviews , Devin King
| More

Most Popular
Blogs
 More: Phlog  |  Music  |  Film  |  Books  |  Politics  |  Media  |  Election '08  |  Free Speech  |  All Blogs
ARTICLES BY DEVIN KING
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   FATHER MURPHY | ... AND HE TOLD US TO TURN TO THE SUN  |  July 29, 2009
    Harking back to an America where one's own lonely voice was the only radio and a BBQ meant a spit in the middle of the desert, Torino's Father Murphy hide detuned industrial textures within stripped-down, spacy folk instrumentation, like a man in a black hat picking up a bullet-riddled guitar with which to serenade his captives.
  •   SOUNDCARRIERS | HARMONIUM  |  May 27, 2009
    The first album from this Nottingham-based band is California dippy: whispered female/male harmonies, slack flutes, swinging drums, comping Hammond organs, and a bass player who finds basic funk riffs in every progression.
  •   THE MOVING PICTURES  |  May 12, 2009
    If one way that bands tie themselves to the past is through sonic reference — Fleet Foxes calling forth Crosby, Stills and Nash, or Animal Collective channeling the Grateful Dead — then there's been a number of bands who tie themselves to the past through cultural reference.
  •   VARIOUS ARTISTS | OPEN STRINGS: 1920S MIDDLE EASTERN RECORDINGS  |  May 06, 2009
    Over the past year, Honest Jon's has released three compilations culled from more than 150,000 78s of early music from the EMI Hayes Archive: music from 1930s Baghdad, early West African music recorded in Britain, and a more general compilation that moved across country lines and the first half of the 20th century.
  •   PAPERCUTS | YOU CAN HAVE WHAT YOU WANT  |  April 14, 2009
    Hidden under reverb and aggressive analog production, the first sung lyrics on You Can Have What You Want belie what seems to be a cheery record title: "Once we walked in the sunlight three years ago this July."

 See all articles by: DEVIN KING

LATEST SLIDESHOWS

All Slideshows