Album: Before Today
Artist: Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
Born: Beverlywood, Los Angeles
Released: June 2010
Genre: Lo-Fi Psychedelia
In Simon Reynolds' book Retromania, he describes a new genre of "hypnagogic pop" that evolved in America near the end of the noughties, with a similar ethos to British hauntology. Unlike hauntologists, these musicians weren't mining public information films, but instead the slickly produced 80s pop (often labelled "yacht rock") of Hall & Oates and Don Henley, as well as Hollywood soundtracks from the time, notably those of Harold Faltermeyer (Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun, The Running Man, etc). The idea is that many young musicians would have absorbed these sounds subconsciously as sleeping toddlers in the 80s, during the nightly period between wakefulness and sleep (hence "hypnagogic"). Ariel Pink has said in interviews that "MTV was my babysitter" during the 80s, so it's no surprise he was a forerunner of this hypnagogic pop trend. However, as well as TV, he's also obsessed with the analogue ways he listened to music in his youth, especially on radio and cassette. In his early years as a musician, Ariel worked alone with an 8-track mixer to create an artfully lo-fi production, a fuzzy sound punctuated by bursts of pyschedelic noise and moments that sounded like a radio tuning in to an 80s soft rock station. Thanks to the patronage of Animal Collective, albums like The Doldrums reached a wider audience many years after they were recorded, and this resurgence in popularity meant that Ariel Pink and his Haunted Graffiti ensemble could sign to a major label (4AD) and record Before Today in 2009/10.
Inevitably, Before Today is more polished and less reverb-laden than previous Ariel Pink releases, but it's still very much a continuation of his early aesthetic. The reference points on this record aren't big 80s soft rock acts like The Police and Hall & Oates but obscure gems like For You by Ago, which is the inspiration for the track Beverly Kills. Ariel must have also spent a lot of time exploring the obscurest corners of Afropop to dig up a 1982 song by Ethiopian chanteuse Yeshimebet Dubale (you can see the video on low-budget channel DireTube); an instrumental version of this song is the basis for Reminiscences. As well as Beverly Kills and Reminiscences, another standout is Round & Round, which has a wonderful circular bass guitar loop layered with haunting melodies and retro interludes, like the phone ringing and the trite lyric, "Hold on, I'm calling, calling back to the ball" (which sounds like a line from Top Gun). There's also a prog rock feel to some of the more complex compositions, like Little Wig, a song which restlessly shifts in style and tone over its short length. One of my favourite songs is Menopause Man, which has a dreamy and otherworldly sound at odds with its disturbing lyrics ("Rape me / castrate me / make me gay"), while closer Revolution’s A Lie contains some bleak views on humanity. With Ariel Pink, it's always best to ignore his inflammatory opinions and just let his music do the talking.
In Simon Reynolds' book Retromania, he describes a new genre of "hypnagogic pop" that evolved in America near the end of the noughties, with a similar ethos to British hauntology. Unlike hauntologists, these musicians weren't mining public information films, but instead the slickly produced 80s pop (often labelled "yacht rock") of Hall & Oates and Don Henley, as well as Hollywood soundtracks from the time, notably those of Harold Faltermeyer (Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun, The Running Man, etc). The idea is that many young musicians would have absorbed these sounds subconsciously as sleeping toddlers in the 80s, during the nightly period between wakefulness and sleep (hence "hypnagogic"). Ariel Pink has said in interviews that "MTV was my babysitter" during the 80s, so it's no surprise he was a forerunner of this hypnagogic pop trend. However, as well as TV, he's also obsessed with the analogue ways he listened to music in his youth, especially on radio and cassette. In his early years as a musician, Ariel worked alone with an 8-track mixer to create an artfully lo-fi production, a fuzzy sound punctuated by bursts of pyschedelic noise and moments that sounded like a radio tuning in to an 80s soft rock station. Thanks to the patronage of Animal Collective, albums like The Doldrums reached a wider audience many years after they were recorded, and this resurgence in popularity meant that Ariel Pink and his Haunted Graffiti ensemble could sign to a major label (4AD) and record Before Today in 2009/10.
Inevitably, Before Today is more polished and less reverb-laden than previous Ariel Pink releases, but it's still very much a continuation of his early aesthetic. The reference points on this record aren't big 80s soft rock acts like The Police and Hall & Oates but obscure gems like For You by Ago, which is the inspiration for the track Beverly Kills. Ariel must have also spent a lot of time exploring the obscurest corners of Afropop to dig up a 1982 song by Ethiopian chanteuse Yeshimebet Dubale (you can see the video on low-budget channel DireTube); an instrumental version of this song is the basis for Reminiscences. As well as Beverly Kills and Reminiscences, another standout is Round & Round, which has a wonderful circular bass guitar loop layered with haunting melodies and retro interludes, like the phone ringing and the trite lyric, "Hold on, I'm calling, calling back to the ball" (which sounds like a line from Top Gun). There's also a prog rock feel to some of the more complex compositions, like Little Wig, a song which restlessly shifts in style and tone over its short length. One of my favourite songs is Menopause Man, which has a dreamy and otherworldly sound at odds with its disturbing lyrics ("Rape me / castrate me / make me gay"), while closer Revolution’s A Lie contains some bleak views on humanity. With Ariel Pink, it's always best to ignore his inflammatory opinions and just let his music do the talking.
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