![high places cover [mp3] Introducing // High Places](http://tympanogram.com/files/high-places-cover.jpg "high places cover")
By blog standards, High Places are indescribably ancient to be getting an “Introducing” post. Sift with me through the obscuring mists of times and antiquity however, and look back to 2006 when Robert Barber and Mary Pearson came together in Michigan (before relocating to Brooklyn) and started making gorgeously psychadelic and densely layered indie pop.
It seems that the duo were a few years ahead of the curve, pre-empting the recent inundation of ghostly chillwave and boy-girl indie duos – specifically boy-girl indie duos comprised of a sweet little girl next door, behind whom lurks a much more grisly or wisened male counterpart (Sleigh Bells, She & Him, a few others) Mary Pearson, you see, grew up studying bassoon performance (not that there’s anything wrong with some good ol’ recreational bassoonery) and Robert Barber lived on a diet of hardcore punk. The two unlikely bedfellows gravitated towards one another though, partly due to a shared musical love of “layers.”
They’ve developed an “exquisite corpse” style of songwriting, where they continually and, fairly indiscriminately, build on whatever idea the other last contributed. You’d think this would leave us with hopelessly a hopelessly inane, avant-garde mess, but you’d be wrong. The result is hazy, psychedelic dream pop which drifts beautifully through countless textures, moods and feelings, like hands running gently over every part of your body. Listen here to their track “From Stardust to Sentience” to see what I mean; it’s a dreamy gem which shimmers and twinkles whilst inspired, syncopated stabs of breakbeats skitter in unexpectedly. There’s a bouncyness in some of the percussion and bass twangs which might remind you of Royksopp. Mary Pearson’s barely-there vocals creep like like lullabies around you, chiming an almost nursery rhyme like melody which will hang around airily in your head for days, like a cobweb.
The band have two albums under their belt already, 2008′s High Places (which the above track comes from) and last year’s High Places vs. Mankind. I’m not sure about any future plans, but both these albums are worth investigating and should get us all excited about the prospect of future releases!
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High Places // From Stardust to Sentience [mp3] from High Places
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