Single Frame
Body/End/Basement
Volcom
The head music nerd on NPR said that electro clash is a musical
movement born of the recent shortage of affordable housing. His
thesis was that some musical movements are caused by changes in
the housing market. He went on to point out that 70s rock bands
came of the post WWII housing boom and that New York punk came of
cheap Bowery apartments. This culminates in the idea that everybody
lives in apartments now [It’s a recession stupid]
and that you can’t play real drums in an apartment.
It was an emotionally appealing idea to me at first since I can’t
play my drums in my apartment. I can’t wash my car, own a
dog over 35lbs, paint my walls, or grow edible plants under my lease.
Yet, I’ve decided that as much as it made for good radio,
he was full of crap. Electro-clash came from this 80’s revivalist
movement.
It is common knowledge that the 1980s were a good-for-nothing cultural
wasteland of musical detritus. Not to say that a band can’t
be musically derivative of the era without sucking. It’s just
a matter of being selective. I’d give examples but I’m
on shaky ground and an trying to at least half-convince myself.
Let us press on quickly.
Single Frame breaks with other electro clash bands with their struggle
for original sounds and tones in the studio. They refuse prepackaged
samples and sounds and instead make their own raw samples with paint
cans, air horns, broken guitars, pocket change, car keys, washing
machines, and secondhand reel-to-reel tapes. They claim to have
recorded tracks in 4 studios, a kitchen, a bathroom, and even a
tool shed. The Austin based trio’s seconds album was produced
by John Congelton. Now the audio obsession makes sense right? Congleton
also twiddled knobs for the Paper Chase, Explosions in the Sky,
and 90 Day Men.
Single Frame formed in Austin, TX in the year 2000 under the moniker
Single Frame Ashtray. They released an 8-song EP, Burn Radio Airtest,
through Already Gone Records in 2003, at the time I described them
as “Devo gone horribly wrong” It was shortly afterwards
that they changed their name dropping the “ashtray.”
I had not seen the potential that lay within. “Wetheads come
running” and “Burn Radio airtest” got lost in
new-wave pandering. While I was harshly comparing them to Devo they
were stewing in a basement studio knowing they were right all along.
Here with body/end/basement they crawl out of that dungeon with
a more matured sound, having shed their tenuous semblance to Lifter
Puller and Les Savy Fav. They haven’t given up on their sonic
collage approach to songwriting but the unlistenable spastic keyboard
riffing has grown on me. They have reached some kind of grand plateau
spanning genres, fan bases and it stretches off into the future
as far as I can see.
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