It has been two-and-a-half years in the making, but finally this March Tokyo outfit New House will release a debut full-length on Second Royal records. It has a math-tastic title (Burning Ship Fractal, the Wikipedia page almost made me faint from numbers), really bad cover art (at the top, yeesh) and as of right now the only mastered song available online to listen to is the same one that has been floating around since July of last year. But gosh darn it, we’ve waited so long for this that we are still giddy about Burning Ship Fractal even in face of some big unanswered questions.
Mainly…are they really just going to cop Animal Collective for a whole album? “Small World” is only one song out of 12, but since it has been the world’s only glimpse at Fractal since last summer (also the last time I wrote about New House), it’s easy to think they might just be trying to make a Merriweather Post Pavilion of their own. “Small World” isn’t just taking cues from Animal Collective – what’s most troubling about this, a slightly more polished recording from the one last July, is that it’s basically the song “Summertime Clothes.” Save for a few differences…chiefly, “Small World” not being as good as “Summertime Clothes”…this is pretty obvious stuff.
I am still excited about Fractal because the few other glimpses have been a lot better…”Transparent Box” yo…but “Small World” is the sonic equivalent of sticking Silly Putty over a Marmaduke comic strip and calling the semi-distorted blob that comes out original. Influences are great…but if I wanted to read Marmaduke, I would read Marmaduke. Listen below.
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/35610038″ iframe=”true” /]
(Note: I actually have a copy of this album, but haven’t listened to it yet! By the time this goes up, I might know a bit more of the direction they went.)