Music blogs attributed this sub-genre to a current rise in grimey, threadbare-sounding dance music, which can arguably be traced to Swedish imports The Tough Alliance with their debut The New School back in 2005. They introduced a blend of tropicallia and French house music that sort of made the indie-rock community tremble from the fusion. Or you can go even farther back to when Stereolab's indie-electro rock was at its peak in the late 90s. Or even Saint Etienne's Foxbase Alpha in the early 90s. As much as those records were influences, none of them really embraced the dilapidated sound of acts like Washed Out or Delorean. Though, one stand-out to come through in 2009 was Neon Indian.
Mexican-born Alan Palomo is the man behind Neon Indian, his third moniker as a musician, the other others being Ghosthustler and Vega. His project Vega drew on a similar sound to Neon Indian, but where Vega was a broad, grandiose blast of club music, Neon Indian is more minimal and battered with its aesthetic.
Neon Indian's debut Psychic Chasms is a lovely little gem filled with the types of bleeps and bloops that is reminiscent of late 80s-early 90s video games like Castlevania, Donkey Kong, and San Francisco Rush. Manipulating video-game synths and lo-fi processes, Neon Indian creates a record that is somewhat flawed, but beautiful in the way it unfolds its themes of teenage innocence and boredom.
The intro "(AM)" is a small little track that begins with a loop, sounding very much like a 70's television show theme song. All of a sudden there are lasers everywhere and bloop-- the album's first track "Deadbeat Summer" comes on. A naturally danceable track that has Palomo singing about summer boredom and the weather.
What's interesting about Psychic Chasms is its overall aesthetic. It's a rough sound. Lo-fi is a pretty hard invention to grasp: indecipherable vocals, cryptic distortion, and unintelligible melodies. Psychic Chasms doesn't go as far as creating a blob of noise, but it does take the cohesion down a bit. Palomo's voice, while sounding melodic, has a really soft murmur that can be a bit difficult to trace through fuzz.
The surprisingly coherent stand-out track of the record and single, "Should Have Taken Acid With You", has Palomo singing about regrets of love and drugs ( "Should have taken acid with you/Take our clothes off in the swimming pool.") backed with a swirling keyboard loop and more distorted video game lasers. "Mind Drips" sounds like it was straight out of a Top Gun or Red Dawn montage, but shows Palomo's voice range with the song's breakdown.
The album does suffer a little bit from its really short interludes, scattered all throughout the record. They contain just bits of small instrumental loops and electronics that are there to, I guess, broaden the nostalgic 80s palette. It’s cool to hear Palomo having fun with the micro-chopped Atari noises but it only distracts from Palomo’s songwriting and fully-rounded dance tracks. But the tracks add to the overall atmosphere of longing and youth.
Listening to Psychic Chasms, one can easily dismiss it as some kind of novelty act that will only be as good as the first listen and slowly fall into obscurity. Honestly, I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking such a thing. It's hard to predict the lasting future of a contemporary act. Will Vampire Weekend be remembered when we're 40-50 years old? Will they be as prolific as Sonic Youth or Yo La Tengo? Or will they just be a band at the bottom of moving boxes waiting to be rediscovered as one organizes their closet?
A couple of weeks ago, Fader magazine's online television network put up a video of Palomo and his band playing a cover of a 1950's Argentine song, "Mi Viejo". The arrangement was minimal with just a small Casio keyboard, guitar, and tambourine. The song is about coming to terms with a father figure's death. Though, what the video showed, besides a really eerie, cooing version of a beautiful death ballad, was that Palomo has a versatility to him, and that Palomo doesn't really need bleeps and bloops to emphasize songwriting. It showed that Neon Indian is probably just the 3rd of many different music personalities waiting to blast out of Palomo's musical mind. Not bad for only being 21.
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