Search - Calla :: Calla

David lynch soundsystem

12/11/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The word "illbient" has probably done more damage than good. Most of its celebrated purveyors have been put out of commission pulling contortionist moves to dissociate themselves from the term. If "illbient" can ever redeem itself and start with a fresh slate, however, it would be an ideal scriptive for Calla. Based in Brooklyn by oincidence rather than design, this trio of Texans projects a subtly psyche-sick ("ill?") sentimental ambience on its eponymous debut. Like (fellow ex-Brooklynites) 310, Calla's Sean Donovan, Wayne B. Magruder, and Aurelio Valle thread programming and sampling through spaghetti western instrumentation (guitars, keyboards, bass, drums, trumpet) to evoke the cracks and complications in the calm of its emotional-desert soundtracks. It's easy to see why the group likens itself to a "David Lynch Sound System." With its uneasiest currents often just subjacent to the surface of the music, Calla beautifully captures the secret subversions and warped normality that inform every frame of the cult director's filmography. A cinematic scene painted with whistling winds and the jingling spurs of ghost riders ("Tarantula") sets the album's eerie mood. Electric crackle and troubling murmurs infiltrate Calla's melodic conjurings - the neurotransmitted misfirings of a disturbed mind. Footfalls keep martial time as they retrace misty Moriccone memories on the splendid "Only Drowning Men." "Custom Car Crash," a Labradford-like postcard limned reverb/twang-heavy guitar, ominous warpath drums, and Valle's softly sung/spoken insinuations, chars and blisters like an old photo thrown on a fire;" June," Truth About Robots," and "Keyes" float within a womb of percussive echoes and darkling thoughts. On the wistful "Trinidad," Donovan's rolling bassline and a lilting calypso melody lead Valle's sigh of "it's over now / always the same as before / until I see her again" down the haunted trail of a bittersweet remembrance of love-lost. "Awake and Under," bristling with spindly fretwork and such crypto-poetics as "she walks on water / so tell her father / she's a miracle," closes the album with a tsunami of heartache, fading back to a protected hush in its final moments. Sigh. Something for the closet romantics who have already been swept away with Godspeed You Black Emperor! and are eager to board another emotional roller-coaster. ------------------------ Gil Gershman Motion (November, 1999)"

Quietly brilliant sounds for hallucinatory visions.

12/07/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"On their debut album, Calla transform urban and rural landscapes into majestic sonic ones, excelling where so many others have failed in this post-everything era of music. Calla's compositions sound born of the dusty desolation of rural towns but filtered through the broken beats of reality that is the band's current host city, Brooklyn. The songs move slowly, and their ominous rumblings comfort like an approaching thunderstorm, with bits of plucked or moaning guitar, clipped rhythms and fractured keyboard melodies quietly withering away into silence. Like the whole album, "Only Drowning Men" touches on such iconoclasts as Paul Schutze, Tricky, Tom Waits and Ry Cooder without an overt nod to any of them. Calla use what sounds like footsteps in a hallway and the clicks of a typewriter to form the song's rhythm. As two notes of an organ wheeze away, a guitar and bass trade short, dark, reverberant melodies when, four minutes later, Aurelio Valle's heavily sighing voice creeps in the song. Calla are about quiet tension without release and music without boundaries. Obsessive futurists looking for new song forms may find them here. from jan 2000 issue of Alternative Press"