Paw Tracks
I enjoy this recordfar more than anything else Noah Lennox (Panda Bear) has beenassociated with. It's the droning heart of Berserkerthat draws me in and the unstable flux that dominates the album'sentire flow from start to finish—it's the way the album stops soundinglike a musical piece and begins to sound more like an attempt tochannel in thoughts and feelings through the environment of soundoccurrences and strange voices that really sticks with me. Littlebabies babble away in the background, suffocated under a harsh wind ofstatic and toy keyboards, beats trample away, providing an electricvisual like a trance party as viewed through the eyes of a real child,and soft melodies repeat over and over again, providing a hypnoticaudio-mandala on which to concentrate the restless mind. Lennox and NYCDJ Scott Mou don't rely on any of the silly conventions that bands likeAnimal Collective seem to draw their inspiration from; there are acouple of Grateful Dead-like symbols featured in the album's art, butinstead of acting like some futuristic psyche-folk outfit, Jane comeacross as an inventive band filled with new ideas concerning where togo with all the electronic equipment they have at their hands. The fourtracks on Berserker fill up 54 minutes, but never do any of thetracks become tiresome, they move with a sense of intent and this iswhat removes Jane from any drone or ambient tag that they might bestuck with. As tempting as it might be to let this music settle intothe background, it is full of small details that wouldn't be caughtunless the ear was really paying attention to all the movementsfloating underneath the synthesized and sustained buzzes or fluttersthat, at first listen, seem to stand above everything else on therecord. Each song has distinct movements and each movement fitsseamlessly with the next. Eventually the distinction of separate piecesof music slips away and Berserker begins to sound likesomething of a concept album, which it isn't. It's just the consistencyand overall mood that this record exudes working its magic throughrepeated listens.samples:
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