Musica.

March 16, 2011, 1 comments

With the means of cheap contemporary blogosphere jabbering (yes, I guess this is self-criticism), it’s kinda hard to describe the music of Brooklyn trio La Big Vic. We’re not alone though. The band itself struggles to come up with any fitting adjectives attributable to their sound, coming up with rather obvious and sorta lame characteristics such as cosmic (“no”) or weird (“…”). So as a start, let’s stick to the bare facts: We got a rather unusual setting, with Emilie Friedlander (of Visitation Rites and AZ) on violin and vocals, and her bandmates Peter Pearson and Toshio Masuda on synth, drum machine, guitar, and whatever else might be necessary to create those sounds that indeed do speak a language of their own. Take their first single Musica as a striking instance: The song starts with a slow drum loop, kraut-informed synth patterns and Emilie’s almost classic folk-like violin play, and it takes more than two and a half minutes until her vocals finally set in, gently, almost subtly uttering “musica”, “mystica”, or “maxima” again and again while the instrumentation unobtrusively meanders along over the course of the piece’s almost eleven minutes. A rare, gratifying experience.

Musica will be the closing track of La Big Vic’s forthcoming full-length Actually on Underwater Peoples. The song itself was recorded as part of Philadelphia’s Shaking Through music and video web series for emerging independent artists, curated by Pixelhorse‘s Elise Oleksiak. Don’t miss the video of the recording session below.

La Big Vic – Musica

By Henning