Eirik Lande
Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Today’s featured selection, chosen by Midday Show host Cheryl Waters, is “Texas Fox” by The Low Frequency In Stereo from the 2009 album Futuro on Runne Grammofon.
Norwegian wunderkinds The Low Frequency in Stereo concoct an interestingly gritty blend of fluffy experimentalism and muddy psychedelia. The band’s recently birthed fourth LP, Futuro, is chock full of the kind of sonic texture one might attribute to their favorite post-rock outfit, minus the overt minimalism. The follow-up to their Norwegian Grammy nominated The Last Tempation of..., Futuro is a boldly eclectic leap forward. If you’re anything like me, simply reading the word “eclectic” smacks of inconsistency, hodgepodge and boring with a capital B. For once, eclectic seems to work as the many branches of The Low Frequency in Stereo’s influence come together to create a sound that is at its core organic and original. Often compared to Sonic Youth (noise, feedback, driving guitar), The Low Frequency in Stereo’s sound is a mix of grooving prog rock, space-jazz and 60’s pop. Bubblegum catchiness meets subversive dirge rock; The Low Frequency in Stereo’s frenetic, anxious rhythms create an unpredictably hazy backdrop for layers upon layers of twangy guitars, laboratory samples, keyboards and organs. All this amounts to a cosmic drug trip of sorts -- the soundtrack to a time-warping Ambien-dream sequence fraught with absurdist imagery, subtext and beautifully blurred lines.
The Low Frequency in Stereo just finished the first round of their Futuro promotional live tour, but they’ll be performing a handful of festivals in Norway and Denmark this summer -- Spot Festival and Rockfest among them -- and they’ll have more dates to announce soon. Check out their MySpace page for updates. For now, here’s “Starstruck,” another song from the new album:
