Small Black
Small Black EP
Jagjaguwar
New York’s Small Black may look like Suicide’s younger brothers, but their sound is a world removed from the latter’s suffocating aggression. The music that spools out of the Small Black EP is not, in fact, sonically part of the controversial chillwave (non-scene) – eschewing the pained hesitations of Washed Out and the ’80s nostalgia of, well, almost everyone else. Well, I shouldn’t totally lie, I’d be willing to bet that Small Black pine for the ’80s a little, but if so it’s the ’80s in the Lower East Side of New York City. The ’80s of the No New York comp and Ze Records. And a little of the early ’90s of Ride and Slowdive – buying import singles and making sure you couldn’t see underneath a curtain of bangs. The Small Black EP is a bracing mix of lo-fi electro grit and shoegazing whitecaps. Metronomic drum machine loops collide headlong into keyboards and synths plugged into scuzzy distortion pedals, with sad Little Prince vocals swirling about, lost in a fog of tape hiss and echo. The end result is, of course, beautiful. Jagjaguwar has reissued this lil’ gem with two new songs ahead of a full-length in the works. Warr-iors…. come out and plaaaaaaayyyy.
Jagjaguwar: http://www.jagjaguwar.com
