hollAnd
drums EP
pulCec/Darla
I’m usually the first to sneer at quirky punctuation or capitalization in an artist’s name. In fact, I usually take great care to get the name “wrong.” However, Trevor hollAnd can put those crazy Bantu glottal stops in his name for all I care – he’s earned it. You may have heard hollAnd’s work in numerous projects, as participant (most notably in Commercial) and as chief knob-twiddler (Barcelona, The Rondelles). This brief outing adds up to only a little over a dozen minutes and seven tracks, but in that time hollAnd manages to sound like the future of music as heard in 1982. Thick, gracefully jointed synthetic riffs bring to mind Gary Numan, while melodies and vocals are reminiscent of lighter new wave fare. “Sparks” drives a sunny waltzing riff into distraction, with a clever drum beat alternating between hi-hat sizzles and tumbled snare hits. “Tranquilizer” is a bit more traditionally structured (if you can call a song under two minutes “traditional” these days) and probably the most “retro” of the bunch, with a bubbling drum machine track and a back-riff that vibrates like a taut cable. I can listen to this disc almost five times in an hour, and still find something new every minute.
Darla: http://www.darla.com • pulCec: http://www.pulcec.com
