Au
Versions
Aagoo
Au is one of these one-man collectives run by a guy named Luke Wyland. He gets a musical idea, plots it out, and then brings in whatever friends or studio musicians he needs to put that idea down on vinyl, or polyacrylic, or whatever media we use as a short-hand for the music industry. Version is a six or seven song EP containing energetic instrumental arrangements (“Are Animals”), lonely plaintive stretches of vocals (“All Myself”), and shoe-gaze influenced love songs (“Ida Walked Away”). The style is hard to pin down; time signatures slide around like a King Crimson album, but the arty IQ tests of true progressive rock or jazz are lacking. There’s some confusion about the track listing – the jacket shows six songs on sides A and B, but my CD player shows seven cuts. I know there’s an actual vinyl pressing out there, so maybe this is a bonus for those early technology accepters that now use the CD format. That last, unnamed track is a peppy 63-second quick step march that might have come off a Bonzo Doo Dah Dog band bootleg, and it feels distinctly different than the other cuts. I’m not sure I can get behind Wyland and really recommend Au, but it amuses and keeps you guessing what the next cut will bring.
Au: http://au-au-au.com • Aagoo Records: http://aagoo.com
