Clay Parton and Troy Kooper have worked together under the banners of several different names (Breast and El Buzzard), but the latest incarnation, Parton Kooper Planetarium, stands out from the others.
The songs on their album “glass & bone” are ghostly, rich in harmonic depth and tend to smolder in the mind like a late-night fire. The 13 tracks are like glowing charcoal that invites you to poke around and create new flickers of flame.
The first track, “In a Desert” invokes the classic Ennio Marricone sound, deeply layered, grounded in a reverberated hook that hovers above the orchestral movements like the sun on a gunfighter’s back. It’s very Spaghetti Western, it’s very new and it sings to the Clint Eastwood in all our hearts.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfSC7Nq0c24[/youtube]
While “In a Desert” will take you to where the buffalo roam, and the conceptualized “So Below” will make your calculator explode with its “hidden threes” motif, “Future Unions” transports the listener to a funky backwater where danger is your friend and questions go unanswered. It seems like the soundtrack to a movie starring Sean Penn, Gary Oldman and Christopher Walken playing the same character. It’s a comfortingly confusing piece of music—the kind that makes you want to squint in hope of reaching a more granular understanding of its elusive meaning. Somehow, Parton and Kooper achieve this while creating sounds that are easy to listen to, with hooks you won’t mind stuck in your head.
The two are elusive and familiar in terms of the music they create. They gamble by creating music that is engaging and interesting, but ultimately so different it’s difficult to rationalize why these two spent two years, countless hours and dollars creating their opus. When asked the proverbial “heads or tails” question, Kooper plainly chose “Tails,” while Parton chose, “Edge. I know it’s not likely, but how smart will I look when it happens?”
Parton Kooper Planatarium’s “glass & bone” is easy listen to; it’s a collection of musical moments waiting for scenery, and it’s up to the listener to provide that backdrop.
The 13″ album is available for $13 or for free download via The Static Cult Label.
.Local Look: Parton Kooper Planetarium
