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Chicago-based experimental

The year of Kranky

By NICK SYLVESTER | September 24, 2007

Rarely is one label responsible for so many of the year’s best releases, yet 2007 might go down as the year of Kranky. Below are songs from four of the best acts supported by this Chicago-based experimental label . . .

White Rainbow, “Mystic Prism” (mp3)
From Portland, Oregon, Adam Forkner performs in a number of indie outfits, but as White Rainbow he trades in psychedelic drone-rock passages and impressionistic guitar noise. Built off a patient conga groove, "Mystic Prism" expands in volume and density over time, pitching fever when Forkner’s guitar squeals out in top-string ecstasy.

Strategy, “Future Rock” (mp3)
This is the title track from Strategy’s third full-length and second for Kranky. A “rocker” in the reggae-dub sense, the instrumental boasts a mix of percussion sounds that snap and slurp over synthesizer long tones.

Stars of the Lid and Their Refinement of the Decline, “Apreludes (In C Sharp Major)” (mp3)
A short but deliberate track from the drone duo, who’ve been recording for Kranky for a decade now. There’s not much in the way of a traditional melody here. Synthesized horn tones move slowly, interacting with one another in pursuit of new harmonies. The tones serve only themselves; the simple beauty of those chords, and their spacious voicings, receives due emphasis.

Deerhunter, “Like New”
On stage, frontman Bradford Cox’s blood-and-hummer routine can overwhelm a pretty and unassuming song like this: cascades of melodic mid-tempo guitar distortion, shifting in and out of phase with vocals slippery with reverb. Kranky doesn’t often peddle such hard rock, but as if caving in to peer pressure, the song shimmers plenty.

Related: Live and kicking, Off the record: Week of May 11, 2007, Adolescent funks, More

Topics: Download , Bradford Cox, Deerhunter

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ARTICLES BY NICK SYLVESTER

PUNK ROCK REDUX | April 01, 2008
Try reimagining early punk as some physically intense and massively popular athletic contest.

ADOLESCENT FUNKS | February 19, 2008
Bradford Cox reminds me of my man Polyphemus — not just the one Odysseus conned in the cave but the one posted up in the countryside and pining in song for the sea nymph Galatea.

POP IN A HARD PLACE | December 16, 2008
The norms Black Dice resist are significant and strong and worth resisting.

BURIAL | December 26, 2007
Dubstep has been given its Dizzee Rascal moment with the release of Burial’s Untrue , the elusive London producer’s second album.