DESCRIPTION:
LP / CD / Digital available here:
northern-spy.com/​products-page/​bird-names-metabolism-a-salute-to-the-energy-of-the-sun/​

-- WHAT IS IT? --

It is an album called Metabolism: A Salute to the Energy of the Sun, made by the group Bird Names. The album was recorded in a basement and an apartment in Chicago in Spring 2010. The songs are an expression and celebration of metabolism, the cord that binds humanity biologically to the cosmos. Metabolism is the group's fifth full-length record.

-- WHAT KIND OF MUSIC IS IT? --

METABOLISM speaks in an abstracted musical language and tumbles forth on internal logic. Recorded in isolation by Bird Names, it is an ornately detailed aural environment, deliberate yet defocused. The record pulses and flows, drifting the listener into hypnosis on thickets of layered melody, densely weaved arrangements of ambient sound, daunting rhythmic turns.

It is a fusion type of garage pop music, with stylistic flavors of kraut, country, the Residents, '70s Beach Boys. The production style is whimsical and irregular, after the school of Joe Meek. It may remind the listener of Renaldo and the Loaf, Ariel Pink, or Captain Beefheart, though it comes from and goes to a different place than this music.

The vibe is disconcerting, fun, sun-shiney.

-- WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS MUSIC? --

The value of Metabolism should be weighed by its usefulness to the listener.

The listener can use this record as weird-times pop. They can bop along to the tunes that get stuck in their heads, and savor the ambiguous emotions the music inspires in them. They can listen while they drive, and think to themself and feel like themself.

The listener can use this record to get lost. The recordings split attention, forcing the mind to unconscious space, to feelings and memories in the shadows of the self. The ear wanders off and returns.

The listener can use this record to accompany and enhance the psychedelic drug experience. METABOLISM is a singular fantasy-land, flowery, rich and warm, that agrees with and stimulates zones of altered consciousness.

Released by: Northern-Spy Records
Release/catalogue number: NS006
Release date: Mar 8, 2011`