Insight & Critique
  • DAC
  • Indie Music Album Reviews
  • About
  • Submissions
  • Top albums
  • Features
  • Contact

Rest as Mutes - There Has to be a Somewhere

3/31/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
​Rest as Mutes

​There Has to be a Somewhere
self-released; 2017

​3.8 out of 5


By Jamie Robash

The Seattle musical duo Rest as Mutes, made up of two guys named Adam and Jason have each been making and playing music around the Seattle area since the turn of this century. The pair met when Adam was playing in a band called Masks Phantoms and Jason was in a band called Juhu Beach. They played for a time together in the psych-folk project Yonderlow. Each of them has also done solo projects both in music and documentary film making.  

But most of that is in the past and Rest as Mutes is their current recording project and their debut record There Has to be a Somewhere is a kitchen sink of much of the band’s previous fiddling about. Its post punk and electronic elements meld with psychedelic folksy pop and delirious melancholic lo-fi pop. 

There Has to be a Somewhere is like a musical flea market and each of the six songs is a radically different stall that sounds nothing like the stall on either side. I struggled to find any sort of coherence linking the songs together, some consistency, which I would get onto the trail of and then wonder if I was just trying to make sense of the fact that I was just fully immersed in the strange beauty that the record has to offer at each turn. 

We open upon the nine-minute “We Could Follow the Coast” a dust storm of swirling synths and click-track drum beats and a slightly jangly riff. The vocals hide out in the hazy background, but the song also adds sound bites which take the forefront and help to advance the plot so to speak, or drive home the meaning of the song in place of any sort of clearly sung lyrics. Next we move into the very psychedelic guitar-synth “Nary Does a Man” which as it moves along over nine minutes gets a bit weird in a Tobin Sprout lo-fi way.  

Rest as Mutes quiet things down later on the mellow and thirteen-minute long Sparklehorse meets Brian Eno “This isn't the Jesus You Know.” It seems a bit too long for its own good. It doesn’t really offer up any reason to keep listening after some time unless you have the record on as background noise. It collapses into a very simple and quite by now slightly overdone field of noise. In many ways this same misfortunes befalls “You Were” until one gets to the juicier bits of searing guitar in the middle, before the song once again retreats into cutting and pasting ethereal soundscapes and bits of voices.

There are many delights in the early half of There Has to be a Somewhere, however after a time thirteen minutes of looped synths, tape hiss and sound clips of talking heads or Baptist preachers just gets a little redundant.  However when these guys are making music with real instruments they sound like serious contenders. ​Recommended. 
Tweet
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

       Critique/insight

    We are dedicated to informing the public about the different types of independent  music that is available for your listening pleasure as well as giving the artist a professional critique from a seasoned music geek. We critique a wide variety of niche genres like experimental, IDM, electronic, ambient, shoegaze and much more.

    Tweets by divideanconqer
    Are you one of our faithful visitors who enjoys our website? Like us on Facebook


    Archives

    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012

Company

About
Contributors

Newsletter

Newsletter
Book Your Band

© Divide and Conquer 2022. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • DAC
  • Indie Music Album Reviews
  • About
  • Submissions
  • Top albums
  • Features
  • Contact