First Listen: Rangers/KWJAZ Lite – “Angel Island”.
July 6, 2011, 0 comments
Probably the most pleasant surprise this year and rightly deemed “one of the best of 2011 so far” has been KWJAZ’s self-titled tape that had been dropped and quickly sold out by Brunch Groupe, the new San Francisco-based cassette imprint/artist collective associated with our much adored Rangers (and also Swanox) that was started as a means to release stuff from some “underexposed Bay Area/LA friends”.
Even before the rare cassette gets the well-deserved vinyl re-release treatment on Not Not Fun sometime this summer, KWJAZ’s mastermind Peter Berends already returns with Angel Island, yet another mind-melting trip into the realms of your outer consciousness, this time not as KWJAZ but under his (mind you) KWJAZ Lite moniker. Now what at first glance might seem as an odd eccentricity makes an awful lot of sense, not only due to a “secret ghost member who contributed to the sounds” but also artistically speaking, as KWJAZ Lite abandons most of the lush, jazzy and funky day-glo splendor of the debut in favor of no less warm yet darker and more abstract sonic excursions.
Aside from Berends’ heavily hypnagogic tripping on the flip side’s two tracks It Is It and Word of Phase, the c40′s a-side sees Rangers’ Joe Knight on a serious brain journey of his own, ripping and reconstructing some of his distinctive motifs already shown on last year’s Suburban Tours to come up with the 20-minute aural séance Xochimilco, a deeply staggering dive into the foggy sounds of a long-lost score for some early 80s San Francisco crime series, custom-made for extended car chasing scenes through the Northern Californian late afternoon haziness.
Angel Island is due August 1. Watch this space for further info soon.
Rangers – Xochimilco (Excerpt)
KWJAZ Lite – It Is It (Excerpt)
