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Tree Wave:
Cabana EP
Tree Wave makes beautifully crafted electronic pop songs that combine pop accessibility with technical sophistication and a unique sound palette. After receiving Tree Waves Cabana+ EP from my editor, taking a glance at some of the press materials and looking over their website, I really started to dread writing this review. I mean, when I read reviews describing a band as experimental electro-pop with ethereal female vocals and with comparisons to Lali Puna and My Bloody Valentine, my gut feeling always runs on a Oh God please kill me sort of bent. Add to that the much-touted fact that Tree Wave makes their music with Commodore 64s, an Atari 2600, a dot-matrix printer and other 80s technological survivors, and I could almost hear the unrefined hack-work already. And now here is the part where I go, but wow was I wrong, this is so amazing blah blah But no. Not yet. I will get to that in the next paragraph. First I need some soapbox time. So while I climb up on this thing that I have faced directly at the electronic music press, let me pose this question: How has electronic musics technology and gear fetishism (retro or otherwise) gotten to the point where most of Tree Waves reviewers begin their reviews talking about how Paul Slocom turned a dot-matrix printer into an instrument, spend the bulk of the review talking about all his modded 80s gear and then only talk about how good the music sounds as a coda to their discourse on the technology? Come on; has the process really become more important than the product? I mean, I fully understand how amazing Tree Waves methodology is, but its amazing because of the beautiful pop accessibility of the product. The contrast of the EPs surprisingly lush, sophisticated electro-pop tunes (which are light-years ahead of what many other artists are making with digital studios and cutting edge VST soft-synths) with its 8-bit genealogy is what makes the process worth discussing in the first place. And yes, I fully realize that in getting so worked up about this I, too, am guilty of putting other concerns in front of the music. Well screw that, Im going back to the top of this page so that the first thing any of you will read is how Tree Wave makes beautifully crafted electronic pop songs that combine pop accessibility with technical sophistication and a unique sound palette. With my bases covered now I will move on But wow was I wrong, this is so amazing blah blah Seriously though, there is so much here to appreciate. Lauren Grays vocals are a perfect compliment to the music. Her voice is strong and full (ethereal being a lazy and, I think, inaccurate descriptor). The way she harmonizes with the music is something that many of her speak-singing electro-pop contemporaries seem incapable of accomplishing. And its all put together so thoughtfully. How many artists could sing a Rimbaud poem as the lyrics to their first track and pull it off? I cant think of any trap for pretension stronger than late 19th century French symbolist poetry, but Tree Wave skirts it and Grays vocal interpretation of Rimbauds May Banners feels genuine and natural. Cabana+ also includes two videos. The video for Sleep splits the image four ways, showing you display graphics, a monitor, and some equipment. Its hard to tell exactly how it all fits together, but it doesnt really matter. The images fit the music. Combat, a track that isnt available on the audio only tracks, is a video made up of the Atari game, which if I remember correctly is called something like Combat. The game is chopped up, and the track is an instrumental that has a bit more kick to it than the rest of the tracks on the EPwhich probably explains its exclusion. But its a cool track and a cool video and a welcome addition to the package. The touch that propels the music beyond a simple EP with videos into something more complicated and completea full vision of Tree Waves ideas that approaches the idea of gesamtkunstwerk (yeah, whos pretentious now?)is the inclusion in the final track of the Commodore 64 synth program that Slocom wrote. About 4 minutes into the last track, which begins as an uncharacteristically formless wall of synth drones and bleeps, the audio disintegrates into an unlistenable, piercing tone. A trick like this would be standard old hat stuff for a last track on most other experimental electronic works, but on Cabana+ it is more. Apparently (and I dont have a Commodore 64 to test this out on, but you know, if anyone has a spare) if you dub to tape the final track starting at the fourth minute you can then load the program onto your machine. Slocum has information about his program and the machine, and in fact how he uses all his vintage equipment, on the bands website. Thats right, assuming the instructions are truthful, his hard work is available to anyone with the right equipment. Which is just proof that Slocum knows what many of his critics apparently dont: the process, being only so important to the product, doesnt need to be territorially protected or fetishistically obsessed over. In the end, it is intelligent song structures, vocals that are more than a stylistic crutch, and the seamless application of the sound-sources that makes Cabana+ shine. Hands down, this is my favorite release of 2004 that I didnt discover till 2005.
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