Skip to main content

Berg Sans Nipple Transcends Electronica Genre

By

Sounds Like: The Tin Man avec brain; the Lion avec heart; Dorothy avec stylin' red pumps


RIYL: Stereolab, James's Wah Wah, Postal Service


A Few Words: The genre term "electronica" is tossed around so much that it's losing its power to define and will soon go the way of other deflated descriptions like "indie" and "alternative". Such is life, I suppose, and the unwavering human need to categorize every bi-labial fricative. Take Berg Sans Nipple, the musical pairing of Frenchman Lori Sean Berg and Cornhusker Shane Aspegren. Their efforts are filed under "electronica", "electronic", "experimental", "dance", and "house mood." I'm not even sure what that last tag is supposed to mean. The more I write about music, the more I'm convinced the boundaries between styles evolve and blur as much as the music.


Berg Sans Nipple is indie by definition, yet they are electronica since laptops and synth are as integral to their sound as are drums and guitar. But are they jazz for the shifts in time signature? If you can groove to it, is it "dance" or "funk"? I struggle to fit the duo neatly into a definite container. However, while categorizing Along the Quai is akin to juggling sand, the album does not altogether escape explanation.


Woven into the tapestry of bleeps and bloops are heavy synthesizers, steel drums, hand-claps, horn, and moody vocals sung in pitched falsetto. Thanfully, BSN spares us the art-rock crap and bee lines straight for accessible harmonies. The result is a melodic, layered, and robust album you can actually listen to. Go the Franco-American alliance!


Download "Mystic Song" from their album Along the Quai.


Buy Along The Quai from Amazon.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Racoon Wedding :: Gather Gather Bones/Rattle Rattle Truth

By
Download The Paper Boy from The Racoon Wedding's album, Gather Gather Bones/Rattle Rattle Truth Sounds Like : they're gonna rip your ribcage out and find your heart RIYL : White Rabbits, Portugal. The Man, Fanfarlo, Rolling Stones ala Beggar's Banquet From the Press Release : Forming from the ashes of Vermicious Knid, and authoring songs in the basement of the all ages not-for-profit art space they own in a nook of the city’s forgotten downtown, frontman Tim Ford and company boast a sense of loyalty to their community that few other bands share. On their debut LP, Gather Gather Bones/Rattle Rattle Truth , issued this October via their own Ford Plant Recordings Co., the band enlisted the help of engineer Leon Taheny (of the Final Fantasy recording credit) and hammered out a record that teems with the spirit of long-forgotten roots music. It’s indebted to the history of mighty back porch music: unbridled, unedited, beautifully intense.
Post a Comment
Read more

Odd Stories in the World of Music

By
As it's Friday, we like to round up a few of the stranger music-related stories and share them with our beloved readers. First, there was the TechDirt article about bands (or the labels who represent the bands) who pull their songs from iTunes after said songs have become popular. Apparently, they think it will force people to buy more CDs, which is kind of like selling tires, then shutting all the stores and telling people they have to buy cars to get the tires they want. TechDirt reacts with the appropriate "WTF". Moving on, we find a lovely post about the "peculiar pocket trumpet" from Trumpet Instruments. Finally, there's this: a homemade hurdy gurdy built from circut hacked Furbies, appropriately named the "furby gurdy."
2 comments
Read more

CONTEST! Win Tickets to See Whitey at The Railway Club in Vancovuer

By
Whitey puts the "F-U" back in Funk. Download the track "West of Hope" to hear what I mean. What : Two free tickets to see indie post-funk sensation, Whitey, at The Railway Club in downtown Vancouver. When : Friday! Friday! Friday! (6 November) How the funk do I get them? Leave a comment. That's all. RIYL : Vampire Weekend, Ozomatli, Cat Empire A Few Words : We don't do ticket give-aways very often here at Duck & Cover. In fact, we don't do them at all. Which is why this is such a special event. Well, it's a special event so long as you live in or around Vancouver, BC. So here's what happened: these two tickets to Whitey just fell off the back of a truck. No, really. They were just sitting there. So I'm turning my good fortune into an opportunity for you, my loyal reader(s). All you have to do to win the tickets to see Whitey at The Railway Club this Friday is to leave a comment . . . that's it! That's all! I'll put all the ...
1 comment
Read more