SIGHTINGS
Arrived in Gold (Load Records)
Reviewed by Sherman Wick

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Sightings defies categorization on the musically curious Arrived in Gold. The New York band sculpts a sound where sonic elements that are normally dichotomous co-exist side by side. The music is both abrasive and ambient, and minimal but dense and structured.

All of these disparate sounds dovetail together in a tribute to the creativity and musical talent of the band. Instrumentally, it's almost entirely a typical guitar, bass, drums and vocals group, but the music is performed and mixed in a manner contrary to the normal noisy rock band, even on Load Records. This is artistically a great accomplishment, if not always as great of an accomplishment in toe-tapping fun. "Dudes" is the lone noise rocker, it's a jagged and loud guitar and bass driven punky song. Vocals are also more up front in the mix. It's a cool tune, but it doesn't fit in with the record's overall sound. The rest of the songs toy with controlled feedback and aggressively ambient uses for guitars. "Arrived in Gold, Arrived in Smoke" exemplifies the sound of the record. Controlled feedback swirls about erasing the distinct instrument sounds that would be expected. Sightings use of percussion is also unusual. "One Out of Ten" is centered around a bare processed or electronic drumbeat and restrained vocals. The song slowly develops as more intense drum, guitar and piano textures are added and the vocalist begins screaming. This method of creating music has tremendous possibilities. It will be even more interesting to see if the band continues in this direction, and where they might take their music.

[Pick this up at www.loadrecords.com.]

© 2005 - Sherman Wick