Big Spider's Back
(Circle Into Square)
Cut-and-paste lo-fi pop and a soft spot for the 1960s make for a good start on Warped, the debut EP from producer Yair Rubinstein, who performs under the pro wrestler-styled guise Big Spider's Back. It's a moniker that wouldn't look out of place on a classic Fillmore poster, sandwiched between the Grass Roots and the Quicksilver Messenger Service. Rubinstein nods at classic psyche with trippy, lightshow-ready loops and sunny vocal performances that say little, but his work is wholly closer to unfinished segments than anything else.
The five tracks on Warped play like early Caribou or a Denies-era Daedelus, where dusty LP samples meet field recordings and big hammering synths for a sometimes powerful finish. Chiming autoharps and modest percussion on "Perfect Machine" are mildly deceptive. This one sparkles-broadening at a snail's pace, one of "Perfect's" two primary notes sticks around for a hazy, reverb-heavy adjournment. A loose collage called "Spooked" paints a picture of Yair Rubinstein wandering around Seattle to collect city sounds and feed them into his computer before chopping them up into odd, miniature bits. He arranges displacing ambient scenarios with great skill, and close attention to "Don't Make Me Laugh" should unmask a deft experimentalist who'll likely produce a strong full-length soon. For now, Warped's textures rely heavily on the slow build of a couple of chords and miscellaneous clipped accompaniment that lines each piece's main musical idea. It's just the idea that needs a bit more punch.
Standout Tracks: "Perfect Machine," "Again Agent" DOMINIC UMILE
