Blue Horns by Trestles

I have been a fan of the LA duo that is "Trestles" since I "met" them on reverbnation, when reverbnation was cool. I was pleasantly surprised to see them on bandcamp under the "Chimera Central" collective.

Eighties style synthesizers, heavy percussion, and samples are the bread and butter of Trestles. The eighties influence is pretty evident, and it's a good thing. Of course, the album would not be reviewed here if it didn't have strong melodies as well.

My fave tracks on the album are: "Trussell Royal-Tea", "Bobbit Drive" (the percussion is epic and the crowd seems to agree with me), "Time Is Digitized", and "Yeti". "Yeti" is a very long track (11:45), it's really two tracks separated by an interlude of soothing crashing waves. The second part is what seems like a collage of samples from a boat racing movie accompanied by a pretty cool melodic line.

I really like this album as a whole. I have a few (minor) criticisms though.

"Ladyhawk" samples Falco's "Der Kommissar". To this day, I am not completely sure it works because that 80s anthem has been so over played and heard that it becomes annoying. "Eggrolls" is not a bad track per se but it kinda seems out of place in the album, with its heavy jungle/urban feel. Not saying that having widely different tracks in an album is a bad thing. Check for example "$" which is a slight departure from the rest of the album with its heavy use of spoken word samples and slower tempo ("Yeti" also).

The Idea Giraffe by justoneguyinhisbedroom

It's always difficult to describe somebody's music, so let's start with what justoneguyinhisbedroom (weird name) himself thinks of his craft: "I [...] tend to produce music that is built up of several short melodic loops that is rhythmically driven by heavily processed percussive samples." Melodic downtempo would probably be a good 2-word fit for his music. The percussion not only provides a beat (it is more or less pronounced throughout the album), but also a nice contrast to the often layered delicate melodies that make up the tracks.

The rhythmic work is impressive. The melodies are delightful. The instrument selection works well. My favorite tracks on this album are "A Nice Frothy Top" and "I Like Not Knowing". If I had to choose a least favorite track, it would have to be "Allow Me To Consult My Idea Giraffe". I found the melody played by the grand piano to be rather weak (too bad because everything else in that track sounded great).

Ugo Capeto definitely recommends "The Idea Giraffe" by justoneguyinhisbedroom.