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A Bold and Blaring Delight Big Black Delta’s Big Black Delta
by Charissa Lock
Synth rock pop to your face. Pleasing everyone from M83 shoegazed fans to Crystal Castles manic distortion groupies, this album captures the eloquence from all angles. With distinct patterns in verses and choruses your pop senses stay calm while the fluency of the entire piece bumps along hitting a ditch here and there. Traveling at a sinister speed on an uneven ground, you never know when you’re going to find yourself caught off guard. The individual tracks themselves are lovely and fascinating, inclusively universal. When the few notes end and you’re transitioned on, it is here where you may feel a slight jolt in thematic consistency.
Big Black Delta has spent a prolonged amount of time soaking in electronic indie rock, until being splashed and dashed with defining head-banging metal (“IFUCKINGLOVEYOU”), an almost six minute low grumbling shoegaze (“PB3”), and 1990’s Prodigy rager (“x22”). If you feel overwhelmed, take a breath and try one song at a time. Let’s take the recent single “Side Of The Road”. More on the mellow side, without being too airy, it gives a welcoming happy medium to the thirteen tracks. Once you’ve fallen for the falsetto with r&b melody infused choruses you can either jump on board with the heavier sounding tracks or lay low among the more relaxed.
The latter tunes carry with them a sophisticated connection with the natural world, sparking fluttering eyes winning in successfully lying closed while the sun shines warming your skin (and pinking it, as it did with mine). You can travel along the soft instrumentation and wispy synth chords (“Dreary Moon” “Love You This Summer”). The horns in “Money Rain Down” allow it to brainwash the listener sliding into my soul, lifting my body in mindless motions, producing a pop’ier sound. This is also the case for “Betamax” picking up its unique tendencies at the chorus allowing the following verse to generate more movement and flexibility. Their instrumental numbers have a more electronic than orchestration sound, more distortion than let’s say..wind instruments. When Big Black Delta goes hard, they give it 100%, drenching in the part.
Each song takes on the role of a character, wearing, speaking, and gliding along as the element of that distinct sound it represents for that 3, 4, or 5 minutes. Doing an impeccable job, the album molds into a combination of all these forces that are swirling and gloating over one another, all hoping to outshine the other. As greedy, for rightful reasons, as they may be, it does leave an unsettled feeling of inconsistency. Yet, someone may find the shifting pleasant and locate a sequential moment that ties together the extensions of Big Black Delta.
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TAGS: Small White Gamma, Great live band, our interview with Jonathan Bates, Two female drummers at their live show