Love, this

in so many ways…

Night Surgeon’s Gondola Crimewave EP is slated for a March 2014 release, but I was given an early appointment to sample the latest from Portland’s sonic doctors. Needless to say, if the ailment is color-by-numbers iPop – today’s prescription is two GCs and a midnight call.

Lush, layered instrumentation underlie slightly post-adolescent / pre-TriBeCa indie pop frontman vocals. There’s something refreshing and relaxing about the interplay between highschool / indie emo-esque vocals and acoustic borderline-world alternative beats – like a kid who still has proper CDs in their car, the only two of which are Yusef Lateef and The Arctic Monkeys

On the wall, time fades
On the wrong, signwaves
Stand on the wall, don’t let me fall

In standard pacific time
When night life begins to shine
Don’t ever leave here

Trapped in selective times, when surface level feels just fine
Don’t ever leave here

Gondola crimewave
Sailing down, sideways

In standard pacific time
When night life begins to shine
Don’t ever leave here

Trapped in selective times, when surface level feels just fine
Don’t ever leave here

Yeah I feel numb
Yeah I don’t feel at all

Resounding, reverberation, wet electric guitar riffs lead the way and linger astray from vocal directives gone distant… around the 3 1/2 minute mark the gondola crosses elemental forcefields between aquatic and galactic coastlines… chants rise and fall, synths and vocoders envelop, muted bass, maxed indigenous percussion, mild pixie chants remain the sole remnant of human navigation through this superlative sonic scape where subterranean and extraterrestrial find bonds in the rebellious bourgeoisie residence of pure music

Sounds like: when speculative fiction eloped with tropical surf, Fool’s Gold’s northern exposure, PDX on a summer day