Slow Six
Tomorrow Becomes You
Western Vinyl
Tomorrow Becomes You, the latest album from Brooklyn, New York’s crossover classical rockers Slow Six, is a real discovery and a delight. But it requires serious listening.
Steeped in New York’s downtown experimental music scene, Slow Six combines minimalist discipline with electronica and rock underpinnings, blending the repetitive themes of Philip Glass with the electronic bleeps and ambient sounds of Brian Eno.
Three years after their second album on the New Albion label, Slow Six follows up with a seven-song tour de force leaning more toward rock experimentation. The songs here are built on minimalist structures with varying intensity, going from subtle drones to emotionally charged rocking-out crescendos that taper off in quiet contemplation.
Yet their brand of minimalism is also completely accessible, in a way that a Glass or Steve Reich album is not. This isn’t the kind of music that will induce migraines.
The opening cut, “The Night You Left New York,” starts off with a bouncing electronic beat, synth washes, and crystalline guitar before kicking into a brisk rondo for a whole nine minutes, with guitar and dueling violins calling and responding to each other before sliding violins and guitar riffs wrap around each other and crescendo in a gorgeous wall of noise.
The fourth cut, “Because Together We Resonate,” features violins that glissando over a meditative rhythm plinking on what sounds like a Fender Rhodes electric piano with strong Asian influences.
That distinctive, sticky key plinking of the Rhodes opens the final cut, “These Rivers Between Us,” with keening violins filling in from behind. Once again, the violins and guitar build on top of each other ‘til it all comes to a head with drums and distortion-drenched guitars.
For all the droning noises, the tension and interplay between the lead instruments are delightful and make you smile. This is music for a rainy day when you want it to shine.
As Ornette Coleman said about the band: “This music should be used in hospitals to cure brain cancer.”
Slow Six: http://www.slowsix.com
