Brighton Park is a fantastical journey; an animated rollercoaster ride through the upbeat theme park - a perpetual chain of cars disappearing into the funhouse - a fearless treading through polluted puddles with pretty colors. This is La Makita Soma's second full length record, a groundbreaking work that marries instrumental rock and techno with undeniable energy.
On their debut Monkey Island, the band defined themselves as a carefree post-rock outfit with an array of talented musicians (ex-lustre king, ex-bill ding) and a blotter of maximum strength acid, turning the heads of mutli-instrumentalist post-rockers and groove-hungry electronic enthusiasts. With their sophomore release the band has taken the lid off the happy jar, pouring forth melodies and foot stomping techno beats that challenge the idle indie-rocker "stand there and nod" cadence. Using vibes, undulating bass, keyboards of old and new, breakbeat drums, trumpets and guitars, the band puts forth an overtly energetic orchestration that expresses a certain excitement about the very prospect of being alive. It's a maximalist display of melodies at once both psychedelic and nostalgic, wrapped up in a modern, avant-garde disco burrito. Fun is a priority with this quintet of quirk, but so is a studious dedication to emotive and challenging music.
If any city is known for innovative instrumental music, it's Chicago. The city that spawned Tortoise, Chicago Underground, Isotope 217, and many, many others now puts forth a new offering to the gods of Post-Rock, La Makita Soma's Brighton Park.
LMS was formed by Dan Snazelle, formerly half of the experimental duo Bill Ding, along with John Hughes III, who is now off making IDM as Slicker. Other members also played in Chicago group Lustre King. LMS' 1999 debut, Monkey Island, was a bit more in the Jazz direction of Post-Rock - Jazzy guitar lines and horn riffs were paired with LMS' vibraphones, drums, and bass. Now, on Brighton Park, LMS looks to Electronica, adding synthesizers, breakbeats, and samples to the mix.
The resulting music would make the perfect soundtrack for a movie like The Dark Crystal, fantastical, mysterious and dark, yet underlyingly light-hearted. Layers of synth, vibe, and keyboard lines provide the melody for each track, while fuzzy guitar hovers in the background, and drums and bass keep driving rhythms. Each song is distinct, and with the average length at about 7 minutes, constant change-ups keep the tracks interesting. Then just when you think you have LMS figured out, they throw in some Hip-Hop guest-starring Hi-Fidel (ÒSpaceshipÓ - the only vocal track) just to mix it up even more.
Adequate comparisons for a band like LMS are hard to come by. At times they are reminiscent of vibe-driven bands like the Mercury Program, but LMS have more layering and complex instrumentation. At other times they even remind of Psychedelic Indie Pop like Beulah, but those moments are few and far between. Of course, there will be the incessant comparing/contrasting with Thrill Jockey Records roster, but in general LMS are more synthy than Tortoise, less Jazz than Isotope 217 and Chicago Underground, lighter than Trans Am. They inhabit a niche all their own.
Brighton Park could make the perfect background music for a party, writing a paper (if you're a college student like myself), or just blissing out and contemplating whatever it is you need to contemplate. The music is interesting without being harsh or distracting, and it will always throw you for a curve at just the right moments. And since the album clocks in at over an hour long, it allows plenty of time to get your thoughts together.
Post-Rock is a genre known for innovation. Sometimes, however, innovation can mean unaccessibility or pretentiousness. LMS, however, avoid these stigmas and create interesting, cerebral music that challenges but doesn't rebuff, and will certainly please fans of Post-Rock, Indie Rock, and Electronic music alike. -- audiogalaxy.com
This instrumental indie disc starts out with an upbeat groove and mood, bringing to mind maybe Tristeza on speed or a slower Trans Am with electronica grooves floating trip hop through the distorted guitar. The song titles hint at the sonic shapes to come, "Grundig Vintage Stereo" and "Glossalalia At 47th". Songs heavy on the keyboards and vibes, but twisted with a strong sense of the present, so even though there's some psychedelic electro-hippy bits, it doesn't get stuck in some techno daydream. The live drums and guitars mix with a rockin' slide into otherworldly ambiance, and scattered soundscapes keep you drifting along with the songs. Almost funk bass grooves at times, but most of the songs spread out like a drug, leaving you smiling and waiting for the next wave to hit you. -- ink19.com
This is the sophomore release from Chicago based La Makita Soma. Monkey Island first exhibited their talents as post-rockers proving to the competition that they can blend instrumentals, jazz, and electronic just as beautifully as all the rest. On Brighton Park they begin to develop a unique flow of rhythms and melodies to shape out their own animated sound. Brighton Park is an exciting blend of guitars, keyboards, vibes, and trumpets uniting with techno undertones to create a sound to where at times you can't help but feel like you're in the middle of a video game! -- kscu
It seems strangely fitting that the little fuzzy bunny on Brighton Park's cover is lying down. Perhaps he got drunk and stoned at an all-night rabbit orgy and fell over while walking home. Or maybe he was walking to the corner market to pick up some carrots and Crown Royal when a roving gang of chipmunks grabbed him, dragged him into an alley, snatched his snakeskin wallet and then roughed him up a bit. While those are two possible explanations for what happened to Mr. Bunny, the most likely reason he's on the ground is that he got trapped in the wake of La Makita Soma's sheer wave of sound, suffered inner ear damage (always a danger for bunnies) and was sent crashing to the pavement.
Brighton Park is something of an aural tour de force -- a sprawling 60+ minute musical mosaic in which the Chicago quintet experiments with a greater variety of colors, textures and genre-trappings than ever before. Two years in the making, La Makita Soma's follow-up to Monkey Island is a bold step forward -- not only in terms of arrangement and performance, but in production values and overall execution -- resulting in a sound that is altogether more surreal, spacious and inviting.
Throughout Brighton Park, the band acts like a bunch of confused but enthusiastic kids rehearsing songs in their parents' garage, arguing over whether they should play jazz, rock, pop, new-wave or lounge. Unable to decide on a genre, the members each do their own "thing" -- resulting in tracks like "Spirit of 26th and California", which oozes a subdued sexuality over a bed of bleeping keyboards, Buddy Rich-like drumming and stealthy bass runs. While this mixed-up strategy might seem like a huge mess on paper, in execution the results are quite impressive.
It's also abundantly clear that La Makita Soma are a fidgety lot, never staying too long on any one musical idea, genre or style. As the record progresses, they hopscotch around like recess-bound fifth-graders -- at one moment reveling in mind-bending, Aphex Twin-meets Rush atmospherics ("Lexington & Campbell"), then abruptly switching gears to create a childlike wedge of post-modern post-rock ("Grundig Vintage Stereo"), and then slamming headlong into a wall of intergalactic funk ("El Rocios Unisex") as they run toward the school at the sound of the lunch bell. Listening to Brighton Park can be a dizzying experience; music class never sounded like this.
Now for God's sake, would somebody please help Mr. Bunny up? -- splendidezine.com
Those against post rock often call it too cerebral or too clinical. Those people should be introduced to La Makita Soma, the band formed by former Bill Ding guitar player Dan Snazelle. The band takes the foundation of post rock and uses it to create light-hearted, upbeat grooves, grooves that fit every post rock standard of complexity but just have an open attitude behind them, perhaps reminiscent of Trans Am, that makes them seem a lot less weighty than they actually are. Brighton Park manages to be an enjoyable post rock album, in the truest sense of the words, without falling off the other side of the mountain into the abyss of easy listening and soft jazz. -- fakejazz.com
These fellows may be in love with the textures and rhythms of dub, electronica and psychedelica, but there is a "devil may care" attitude to their performances that sets it apart from Tortoise's studied intellectualism. Monkey Island's (debut) instrumentals are filled with playful understated grooves that ...ebb and flow beautifully as all five musicians work in perfect unison. La Makita Soma's instrumental telepathy sets them apart from the drone of the week.
- Alternative Press
Given the two bands' common Chicago roots, instrumental aesthetics and jazz, dub and electronic influences, it's only natural that La Makita Soma would merit a steady stream of critical comparison to Tortoise, but that's not only lazy reviewing, it misses the point altogether. With Monkey Island, La Makita Soma imagines a world of sound considerably more surreal and cosmic than their post-rock contemporaries, with tracks like the opening "The Monarch" combining heavily-treated guitars, lumbering rhythms and slow-motion synth washes to evoke a kind of weightlessness; the songs seem to constantly change shape, and although at times the music is too formless for its good, it's invested with enough ingenuity and wit to consistently keep things interesting.
- Jason Ankeny, AMG
The rhythms are more pronounced and tinged with rock, and the various layers of ephemera--heavily treated guitar lines, vaporous vibraphone arpeggios, wheezing analog squiggles, pastel synth washes, and the occasional turntable scratch--are thicker and more dramatic than anything the big T's [Tortoise] ever cut.
- Chicago Reader
...the second I put in La Makita Soma's Monkey Island I was pleasantly surprised and seduced by the incredible sonic groove these Chicagoans put on the table. Monkey Island is aflush with some dreamy, synth-strumental landscapes, but the ambience they create is refreshingly free of pretension. This is the kind of laid-back, blissed-out aural escape you'll need to retreat to after a tough day in the trenches. Get their cd. You can thank me later.
- Ink Blot Magazine
If proggy instrumental moodiness gets your motor running, you'll want to visit Monkey Island with all due speed. Having nothing whatsoever to do with the LucasArts computer game series of the same name, Monkey Island presents six intricate, frequently sinister compositions for guitar, keyboards, drums, horns, turntables and other musical esoterica. Given their lengths -- from six to eleven minutes -- you'd be correct in guessing that none of these tunes progresses in a linear fashion. "The Monarch", for instance, undulates along an arc between math rock and seventies-style fusion-influenced prog-rock, with several stops in the ambient domain. "The Intern", on the other hand, places analog synth at front and center, sounding almost Aphex Twinnish for its early moments, then drops into a tribal rhythm which gradually incorporates a jazz tempo, horns and intermittent new-wave electronics. "The Chairman" adopts a loungy groove that grows steadily more intricate, ending as a complex concatenation of keyboard, guitar and string melodies. If you listen attentively to Monkey Island, you'll gradually begin to figure out its methods, identifying germinating melodies at their earliest stages and observing the causal relationships they create...or, if you prefer, you can simply kick back and enjoy some fascinating instrumentals sans intellectual involvement. Either way, you win.
- George Zahora, splendidezine
