album reviews

Zap Tura Adaptasia

WARMGOSPEL.BANDCAMP.COM

With every surge of the pandemic, a soundtrack emerges. Cyclical soundtracks, in fact. First, warm, optimistic fear foists celebrity covers of “Imagine” onto us all. Then, months of winter mark dour observations as people spend time with themselves looking at the brash remains that they all share. Rinse, repeat, release until it’s hard for anyone to feel that optimism is worth placing a bet on anymore.

A question then: On the turning into winter of calendar year three, would there ever again be energetic daydream music, to mark the start of what seems now to be an endemic disease? Answer: Zap Tura’s Adaptasia. Meticulously produced by Phil Young and released by Des Moines’ Warm Gospel Tapes label, Zap Tura’s second full-length album Adaptasia is a feast of digital exuberance, something I didn’t know could be offered earnestly anymore.

The first song, “River,” explodes from out of a sped-up sitcom theme that can still be found if you twist the rabbit ears just right into a truly joyous opening tune. Ritual melodic forays are introduced, most of which will appear throughout the album’s ensuing eight anodic tracks. For proof, credits on “Echospace” include “AM radio & cell phone oscillation,” further establishing Zap Tura’s insistence on including all imagined digital instruments into the mix. Bird song bridges the dead space between tracks, setting the green screen to allow the requisite synth-whirl to accompany this chorus on “Protector”: only way to get it. It’s an innovative release strategy that demonstrates how serious the man is about his music and connecting with his audience, and I don’t think I’ve seen a model quite like it.

Opening track “Firecrackers at Dawn” sets the tone with an eerie vibe, drawing you in with Tedesco’s warm, haunted, Paul Simon-esque vocals. The warmth vanishes about midway through the song, though, as it bursts into a proggy guitar riff and a jazzy saxophone workout from Boston musician Evan Laflamme. The hook of the song is a lyric drenched in reassurance and doubt: “It’s OK for the things you love to let you down once in a while—isn’t it?”

“VSFLS” (Violence, Sex, Fear, Language, Substances) is a moody rant about the state of the world that builds into the EP’s most driving moments, but still remains intimate. You can hear the keys on the saxophone clicking, as if it were right up next to your ear, telling you a secret, as the world is engulfed in flames around you.

The title track is the prettiest of the bunch, but even it has a ghost, in the form of amp buzz that keeps things from getting too pretty. The tune is a showcase for Tedesco’s fingerpicking style on guitar, which anchors it and gives it motion. Lyrically and stylistically, Morning Bells is another piece of pandemic music (Tedesco calls it out in the first song). There have been a lot of those in Iowa music the last few years—artists haven’t been given much of a choice—but Tedesco might have best captured the overall flavor of our collective dread. You can feel the frustrations and anxieties of a working musician struggling throughout this trio of songs. But, as the writer Malcolm Gladwell says, “A lot of what is most beautiful about the world arises from struggle.”

We’re not soft, we look soft We just play piano and love hopscotch (Live a little)

While certainly not a yawning philosophical pit, it’s still heady enough, saved perhaps by that recurring and well-received invitation to live, at least a little. There is a lot of that sentiment throughout the whirl, both stated and implied in countless synth layers. Guided by a lost Local Natives guitar line, “Every Blessing” even comes with digital church bells ringing. Combined with interpolations from some artificial music box, the whole thing could have easily become lost into its own expanse. But quiet, somber notes on a well-tuned piano refocus the tune, and the album for that matter. Ambulance wails in the back/foreground bring the listener even closer to our shared current and former moment: It cannot be all kaleidoscope daydreams anymore, even if we try really, really hard.

Fittingly, “Paradise Lost” marks the symphonic fall of the record, a bookmark of chaos and distortion that isn’t resolved until the record’s final track. “Endless” returns to the former satellite pop which

found such joy in chasing melodies through hard drives. It could be horns anchoring the melody on the track, but it turns out to be yet another synth layer. That’s the pleasure here: wandering electronic soundscapes in heedless pursuit of straight serotonin fuel, never relying on lyrics or vocal deliverance to spread its message of innocent effervescence. My advice? Get it while you can. Winter can’t last forever, can it?

Dan Tedesco

Morning Bells

DANTEDESCO.COM

It can be a dicey affair when an artist who operates in traditional songcraft decides to experiment. They risk alienating some of their audience, while the new audience segment they attract may not appreciate the existing back catalog of their more “standard” fare. Dan Tedesco’s excellent new EP, Morning Bells, manages to navigate this territory and come out with something rare: a three-song collection of well-crafted (not to mention pointed) songs that also explores some interesting sonic territory. It is ambitious, but doesn’t neglect what came before.

There is no traditional percussion in these songs, no drummer on a kit. The rhythm section takes the form

of hand claps, shakers and general banging on things (but in ways that make the songs more interesting). And the EP won’t be released in a traditional manner, either—Tedesco is dropping one song at a time from February through April on his Music Channel, a site that works like a more interactive Patreon, where he can supply unique content to his fans and offer a way to interact with him directly. This EP won’t be released on any streaming services; the Music Channel is the

THaT’S THE PLEaSUrE HErE: WaNDErING ELECTrONIC SOUNDSCaPES IN HEEDLESS PUrSUIT OF STraIGHT SErOTONIN FUEL, NEVEr rELyING ON LyrICS Or VOCaL DELIVEraNCE TO SPrEaD ITS MESSaGE OF INNOCENT EFFErVESCENCE. —Avery Gregurich —Bryon Dudley