AEM093 Truman Peyote

The 21st cen­tury is beau­ti­ful and its name is Tru­man Pey­ote: two guys, Caleb Johannes and Eric Far­ber, from Jamaica Plains, Mass­a­chu­setts who so suc­cess­fully meld the tex­tural pos­si­bil­i­ties of the dig­i­tal and ana­log, of sam­ples, found sounds, and live instru­men­ta­tion, that their music is less like a hybrid and more like a brand new species. Acts like Aphex Twin may have trail­blazed the path, and still oth­ers like Ani­mal Col­lec­tive may be get­ting more press, but Tru­man Pey­ote proves this sound is more than just an iso­lated phe­nom­e­non. The dam has burst and a new zeit­geist is upon us. After lis­ten­ing to their dig­i­tal 7 inch, car­oming inge­niously between cos­mic psych-noise and infec­tious pop, you’ll won­der why the hell it took so long.

Tru­man Pey­ote gained some nice trac­tion at the end of 2009 via a spot­light on the track “New Wife, New Life” by the Website-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named (rhymes with Bitch­spork). The electro-hippie vibe of the song played up to the near hys­ter­i­cal ado­ra­tion for Ani­mal Col­lec­tive at the time. It was a nice “we can do it too” moment, but don’t lis­ten to Tru­man Pey­ote expect­ing an Ani­mal Col­lec­tive trib­ute band. Johannes reflects on the AC com­par­i­son: “In my opin­ion, “New Wife, New Life” is struc­tured in a way more sim­plis­tic way than any Ani­mal Col­lec­tive song.  These days every­one is so focused on com­par­ing bands to other bands, and while some of it may have merit, it’s not always the best for us.  YES, I lis­tened the shit out of Ani­mal Col­lec­tive in high school, YES I bought their records and loved/listened them to death, but NO, we did not start TP or cre­ate these songs to resem­ble Ani­mal Col­lec­tive in any way.  Our style is just obvi­ously the direct result of EVERYTHING we have ever lis­tened to and enjoyed…” Their lat­est full-length release Light-Lightning is a much more sav­age, inchoate expe­ri­ence than Mer­ri­weather Post Pavil­ion. Novel sounds and melodies morph at the speed of life, like fetal cells, explod­ing with alien pos­si­bil­ity in an elec­tronic pla­centa. Songs bub­ble up, effer­vesce, and retreat back into the froth with­out ever giv­ing them­selves com­pletely to a reduc­tive com­pre­hen­sion. Often the trans­for­ma­tion is vio­lent: tracks “Fish­scraps” and “Fire­time = Snow­day” cul­ti­vate unique ambi­ent sig­na­tures, beats and all, and then sud­denly lapse into min­i­mal­ist or found sound digres­sions. These songs are not high­ways; they’re more like the his­toric quar­ter of an old Euro­pean city, full of alleys, nooks, niches…and dead ends.

The most excit­ing songs on Light-Lightning are the ones where Tru­man Pey­ote elic­its a cer­tain expec­ta­tion, and then dra­mat­i­cally over­turns it with­out warn­ing. If the pair, Caleb Johannes and Eric Far­ber, pro­duced an entire album like the song “Bean­town”, they could do quite well as the afore-mentioned AC cover band; if they did the same with the last half of “Sarah Delta” as source mate­r­ial, they would make a fan­tas­tic Aphex Twin ripoff. But they do nei­ther. Or rather, they do both and more, pil­ing inven­tion upon inven­tion like an impos­si­ble musi­cal Jenga, hav­ing cre­ated in Light-Lightning a tow­er­ing, poly­glot struc­ture that should fall to pieces but some­how never does. A remark­able achievement.

Since Light-Lightning, Tru­man Pey­ote has released Peaced Together, a split 12” with Many Man­sions. The A-side for the Ampeater 7 inch, “Magen­ta­door II” was taken from this release. The four minute track starts hot and heavy with a mon­strous, moody syn­the­sizer intro. An over­ture in mina­ture. Elec­tronic music was an early influ­ence for the band: “We def­i­nitely started out with a much heav­ier influ­ence from dance music (using synths, drum  machines, and sam­plers), but recently we’ve been adding a huge dose of pop in there.” The pop makes an entrance about a minute into the song. The synth over­ture winds down, a beat kicks in, and a singer drops a few stan­zas of rock ‘n’ roll haiku before the instru­men­tal side of the song reasserts itself. The sound is rest­lessly inven­tive, hitch­hik­ing from genre to genre: “We used to only play elec­tron­i­cally, but now I play gui­tar, and we tour with Orion Rus­sell (of Lord Jeff) who rocks the drums for us.  For our record­ings the drums are either done by Wes Kaplan (of the Craters), Orion, or Motoki Otsuka (of Vit­a­min Seed).” If you see Tru­man Pey­ote on tour these days, expect to see the whole crew coax­ing out this sonic mixer with “live” instru­ments side-by-side with the sam­plers. The record­ing process has grown beyond the orig­i­nal two mem­bers as well. Light-Lightning was, “…recorded, mixed, and mas­tered with the help of our friend Jake Yuhas (for­merly Dropa, now Bug Eyes)….the record­ing process of Tru­man Pey­ote is always a big col­lab­o­ra­tion with a lot of our friends who are also mak­ing killer music out of Boston.”

The B-side, “Stee­lestack”, comes off a split 7-inch with Tur­tle Ambu­lance. If you’ve only heard “New Wife, New Life” the feroc­ity of “Stee­lestack” might sur­prise you. Johannes remarks, “….but sur­pris­ing peo­ple at shows is what we love.  It makes the whole expe­ri­ence more enjoy­able, keeps us fresh…” The track begins inno­cently with a few elec­tronic burps, blips and squig­gles. Then a recur­ring sam­ple of what sounds like a videogame char­ac­ter shout­ing “Power up!” announces itself. Again and again and again and again. Tru­man Pey­ote dresses the sam­ple up with a full wardrobe of effects. Squeaky, muddy, crackly: the sam­ple is rein­ter­preted through a thou­sand dif­fer­ent lenses and hurled at the lis­tener. It’s a “Richard D. James spin­ning the sand­pa­per” moment. This isn’t music meant to doze off too. It’s howl­ing, insis­tent, neu­rotic, and will not be ignored. The brief inter­lude of clas­si­cal piano towards the begin­ning and the gen­tle synth outro only serve to remind the lis­tener just how bru­tally their ears have been man­han­dled. The song is beau­ti­ful, but it’s a ter­ri­fy­ing beauty, like the open maw of a wild car­niv­o­rous animal.

Plans for the future include a tour with their 12” part­ners Many Man­sions in July as well as a tape release via Mir­ror Uni­verse some­time this sum­mer. So be on the look­out for the tour and the tape, and expect the unex­pected: “The new tracks are waaay dif­fer­ent from Peaced Together, so we’ll see what peo­ple think.”

Mike Gutier­rez

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