eMusic Review 0
Luke Fischbeck and Sarah Rara, the duo at the core of Lucky Dragons, make the most human-sounding electronic music around. Almost all of the 22 brief, hovering pieces that make up their sixth-or-so album (it's hard to keep track of their prodigious output) are built around some element of human frailty. Many of them, in fact, involve the Dragons 'voices — murmuring the title phrase of "Drinking Dirty Water," say, or acting as wordless, approximate-tone synthesizers. The other raw materials of their digital arrays are similarly imprecise: hand-held chimes, birdsong, what sound like spinning coins. "My Are Singing" centers on a banjo flourish, and also involves a rhythm track that seems to be clicking tongues, as well as the flutter of two hooting voices run through some kind of digital effect. The inhumanly fast cycling tones of "I Keep Waiting for Earthquakes" give way to a rough-edged ensemble of recorders and piano. Most tracks have regular rhythms, but this isn't dance music, exactly: the repetition serves to hold each sound in place so it can be observed from all angles.
Fischbeck has talked about how the idea of an imaginary language was part of the concept behind this album, and it's… read more »
