(2018) TIGUE - Strange Paradise

Review: 
If Tigue‘s three percussionists sound particularly in sync on Strange Paradise, the Brooklyn-based group’s follow-up to its 2015 debut album Peaks, it’s attributable, at least in part, to how long they’ve collaborated: apparently the Ohio-born band members, Matt Evans, Amy Garapic, and Carson Moody, have worked together since they were practically children. On the new set, co-released by New Amsterdam Records and NNA Tapes, three pieces are presented, two featuring Tigue alone and the other the trio augmented by guitarists Benedict Kupstas and Seth Manchester, bassist Tristan Kasten-Krause, Wurlitzer organist Trevor Wilson, and OP-1 synthesizer player Eliot Krimsky. 
Tigue’s sound arsenal includes the usual suspects for a percussion group — vibraphone, cymbals, shaker, drums, woodblock, maraca, kalimba, roto toms, and so forth — but the trio also enhances its presentation with guitar, cassette tapes, and synthesizers (Casio 403, Juno 60, Moog Sub 37). Soundwise, the album’s three tracks draw heavily from drone, trance, post-rock, and krautrock traditions, and align themselves effectively to the vinyl format in featuring two tracks totaling twenty minutes and the third twenty-one. Of course tight ensemble playing is especially important in the case of a percussion-based outfit where expectations of rhythmic precision are high and any cracks in the players’ performance are particularly noticeable; put simply, any missteps are magnified when the members are expected to interlock seamlessly. Needless to say, no such cracks are audible in Tigue’s case, at least not on this recording. 
 

Tracklist: 
01 - Triangle.flac 
02 - Contrails.flac 
03 - Quilts.flac 

Summary: 
Country: USA 
Genre: classical, electronic, post-rock