Music Reviews
Seven Saturdays

Seven Saturdays

Seven Saturdays

You can blame anything on living in L.A., but it’s not the city’s fault, really. L.A. grew to what it is today because of America’s relentless push westward crashing into the inevitability of the Pacific Ocean. In the smoggy traffic jam of blunted ambitions and the ethnic mix of the Far East and Central America and Midwestern white folks looking for a tan, Seven Saturdays has found a calm nexus of electro-acoustic sound effects and space soundtracks. Run by the enigmatic Jonathan D. Haskell (no relation to Eddie far as I can tell), Seven Saturdays finds an electronic calm of Phillip Glass and Brian Eno influenced soundscape, occasionally spiced with a mistuned shortwave radio or the sped-up sounds of the San Andreas plate gently subducting. This five-track EP starts with a bit of a jarring dissonance, but quickly disciplines itself into an almost melodic groove that threatens to find a rhyme or time signature, but never really does. Tracks have names but no lyrics, and I don’t see the aim of this project as a hit pop song – what I see here is a glorious 1930s art deco rocket ship landing on a Ray Bradbury colored planet. As the final track builds, there is a rhythm at last, but it’s sad and lonely, just like living in L.A. Our hero has seen the stars, but doesn’t have enough fuel to return home. If there’s a message on this disc, it’s “Everything has its price.”

Seven Saturdays: http://www.sevensaturdaysmusic.com


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