WAND - Vertigo

...tick tock, rappa tap tap, glitch bloop 'n roll-here come ol'
Wand back, they're coming down slowly. The denser they
get, it appears, the simpler they fly. And now...five years
after a Laughing Matter, baby-who are "Wand" this time?
With Vertigo, what hath Wand spawned?
It's multichromatic, that's for sure, but its too soon to
tell, we're too close to see. The way cells are replaced
and all new again? That's it. Now they are ten and all new
again (see Ganglion Reef, 2014), but in the sample set of
the time between-this time/the time of the quintet Wand
of late, of Plum and Laughing Matter-they've undergone
the complex -2+1 dimensional restructure, coming out a
quartet (Evan Backer, Evan Burrows, Robbie Cody, Cory
Hanson). Two original members, if you're keeping a chart.
We're not judging you!
So, new-ish, in new ways anyway. But don't...the new
Wand's built upon the exalted altars of old. There's flashes
of sentiment and tension, nudity and evasion, theatrical
elevation, giant pieces chunked throughout alongside little
bits of things. Allowing for slippage, it's all one: the far
horizon drawn in, nearer than ever before, allowing the
chance for greater integration, if you stay open. And so
they did. Vertigo is the sound of feet lost, regained, lost
again, equilibrium in soft focus, a swaying feeling, more
automatic and associative: in time, direct.

Determining to work backwards (or at least inside-
out) this time, Wand recorded everything in their own

studio; pieces cut from improvisations and reshaped, writ-
ing from within the performance, without the woodshed.

Unconsciously, in the shadow of themselves, and turning

round and round (and round), they kept finding that empty
space and playing what it implied. Everybody took on a
new position in addition to the old one. It was intuitive,
strangely ego-less...going somewhere they'd never been
and not knowing what they were doing, but committing
and recommitting, unafraid to eject in a constant positive
forward momentum.
Listen: it's like folk music for children, with synthesizers
and other crap. Raw details with a lush velvet backing.
Hear the articular evidence granular within the jams as
it flows.

Just slip it on and hope to become one with the land-
scape?

You were anyway.
Hoping to listen and, more and more, feel less and less?
Naw.
Wand are funneling energy, pitching space your
way-more like to stand your hair on its toes with every
verse-chorus. Pulling on segments of infinity, boiled down
and resequenced, they've devised their own dream gear to
drive the old moterik into wide open space, in atmospheric
reverb, on perma-globular drift. In stereo. A pulpy SLiCE
of the collective contradiction; the songs slide cuts of
genus and genii, captured beatscape and soundtrack,
found melody on anxious rock beats pulled into the ether
and spurt back out again-pretzeled and more-into a
new gravitational center, sewn together by tongues. And
propagated by more, as you commence to sing along.
Looking back, everything was improvisation. Vertigo
was inescapable. But what music did await!

Vinyl release of Wand - Vertigo. Released through DRAG CITY and available on LP.