ARTIST: Dat'r
TITLE: Turn Up The Ghosts
LABEL: Hush Records
GENRE: Indie
BITRATE: 181kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 42m total
RELEASE DATE: 2007-03-13
RIP DATE: 2007-03-14
Track List
----------
1. Turn Up The Ghosts Part I 4:05
2. Turn Up The Ghosts Part II 2:49
3. Yellow Cake 5:01
4. Innercom/Inner Calm 4:46
5. !Um !Hot 5:41
6. Steam Room 4:01
7. Silica 4:10
8. The Bloody Lump 6:35
9. Choice Cuts In Sauce 5:45
Release Notes:
Dat'r is different. The casual show-goer is often taken by surprise when Matt
Dabrowiak and Paul Alcott take to the stage behind a mess of wires, a laptop,
synths, controllers, and percussive instruments. From the first notes, the
message is clear, sometimes shockingly clear: This is no sit-down show, friends.
This is dance music. These two bring it.
Now, when I say "dance music" it brings with it a constellation of images: John
Travolta in a white suit, 80's New Wave, Debbie Harry, Disco Balls...it's
loaded, right? Dat'r knows this, and they've taken the words floor, get-down,
butt, shake, higher, hotter, and so forth out of their vernacular. They trust
that the audience will figure it out.
The production is an old-meets-new cocktail, due in part to the duo's history in
a conventional indie-rock band (they represent two-thirds of Portland's
respected Binary Dolls). The beats are culled from breaks played on a
traditional kit by Alcott. They recall the best of the techno explosion/
implosion of the early nineties, and funk undertones, while the synth textures
and glitchy, spliced vocals are dazzlingly forward looking. The bass lines are
melodic and tightly molded to the groove, demonstrating a sophisticated sense of
the what makes a dance song danceable. Dabrowiak's vocals saunter over the beat,
and curl up with the hooks. These are organic arrangements that you can almost
visualize a conventional five-piece band playing. The trick Dat'r pull off is
that they put on a better show with just two.
How? In two words: raw enthusiasm. Like I said, they just bring it. There's
plenty of crashing cymbals, blistering synth leads, a good dose of audience
participation, hip-hop inspired mic-posturing, some old school DJ banter, the
occasional deployment of a smoke machine, and the duo's signature joystick solos
and duels.
That's right. Joysticks. With the help of an enterprising MIT student, Dat'r
have enabled standard video game controllers to manipulate their music, and just
like the Generation Y kids who have ushered in a paradigm shift in digital
entertainment, these boys have grown quite adept at their carpel-tunnel-inducing
finger acrobatics (without actually playing videogames, mind you). It is a
spectacle that is simultaneously incendiary and endearing, novel and nerdy--a
hybridization of Hendrix and Talking Heads, perhaps. Err, we'll leave it up to
you to decide.
Mostly, Turn Up The Ghosts is rock-solid debut from a band that is broke the
mold. Likewise, HUSH Records (writers often take the name too literally) is
overjoyed to release one more album that will dismantle the spurious notions of
"the little, quiet label" from Portland.