CL13
Christmas Decorations
Communal Rust
CD, mp3

Release Date: February 9, 2007

Tracklist:
1. Upstage the Drips
2. Closer to Carpet
3. Twig Harpoon
4. Aphid Text
5. Browning Out
6. Clay Margins
7. Mice Over Feathers
8. Mirrored Mold
9. The Umbrella Fell

Christmas Decorations' second full-length Communal Rust should please fans who have been following the lineage of processed-guitar heroes and anti-heroes (Fennesz, Ambarchi, et al). But where those icons are making forays into drone and noise, Christmas Decorations are taking the other fork in the road, back towards the melancholic, crisp strum of post-punk and indie, and back towards an atomized, crumpled, improvised sound design.

Communal Rust documents essential "anti-guitar guitar music." The songs revolve around a dichotomy between guitar-pedal-and-computer induced fragmentation, on one hand, and the intricate, melodic guitar motifs referenced to classic post-punk and forgotten lo-fi indie music. Pull away the layers of glitches, snippets, trills, and echoes and you might discover a core guitar disposition that recalls the contemplative, steely tone of early Factory, 4AD, or New Zealand music. That's not to say that the duo is boxed in by reference points; moreso, these influences are exerting the most gravitational pull on the band's temptations to commit all-out, fractional sonic disintegration.

This tension between new and old, rough and smooth, or chaos versus control, puts the band squarely in the ComLib sensibility of sublimely balancing problem and accessibility in music. Following on the band's debut release, the criminally underappreciated Model 91 (kranky 2002), Communal Rust marks a key point in the band's development and is a crucial addition to any collection of experimental music.

Artist Info

PDF Version of Promo Sheet

Reviews & Press
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