MothSpyEros
Sueño Rojo
Lunatic Works
The collage of sound begins almost inaudibly and builds, until a sweet female voice sneaks in quietly, taking over the sound with its subtlety. It's hard to pin down the point at which the song has begun to move forward, and when it does for a few seconds, the music
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drops away, voice floating over the sounds of a city and melting into a lullaby of folksy, harmonious electronica.
MothSpyEros uses layers of instrumentation and everyday recordings to create
Sueño Rojo
's otherworldly, yet familiar, soundscape. While the second track dissolves seamlessly into the third, a monotone voice is barely audible in the background at high volume and completely absent, but in no way missing, at a lower one. Somehow during the recording the band seems to have programmed sounds for emphasis at certain volumes that disappear at others.
This is an album that seeps its sexuality out of speakers by seducing every aspect of auditory experience. The background sounds of the café come to life and memory is sparked by the silkily sung lines of "Planets Away," beginning with the chirping of unseen birds and easing into an angry heartbreak that is so calm it's even more disturbing.
Sueño Rojo
is dark, but when the band suggests listeners "Prepare to dream in the color of red..." they've found it: At times it is the vibrant blood red, the red that can never fade into some safe shade of pastel, but instead can only darken until it is as close to black as possible, without losing the seduction that clings to it.
MSE has captured the cheerful melancholy of albums like
Siamese Dream
,
Loveless
and
Seventeen Seconds
that's been absent since the bands that wrote them stopped making good albums; but MSE's magic is daring to stray from the convention that says music should always sound like music.
