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Collections of Colonies of Bees, "Customer"
Polyvinyl
Just like their previous album, Face.(a,this year's release from Collections of Colonies of Bees manages tosqueak in very quietly just underneath the radar, without a lot of hypeor fanfare, to surprisingly become one of my top albums of the year.The formula holds close to the last album: taking an instrumental rock"band" setup and mutating it through inhuman editing. It's a setupwhich has gained popularity in the last couple years with groups likeRadian, Nudge, Trapist, and Supersilent, but Collections of Colonies ofBees have become masters at the art. Pele have decided to call itquits, however, the Collections lineup is now almost identical to Pele,with Jon Mueller and Chris Rosenau bringing other Pele alumni Jon Minoron board this time along with Jim Schoenecker. (Perhaps they weregetting tired of being in TOO many bands—see above review!) Bright andspringy guitar melodies live harmoniously with manipulated twitters,beats and whirrs, while miscellaneous unidentifiable objects providerhythm colorization in spots. Fans of both the upbeat Pele andMuller/Rosenau's improvisational experimental outings find a mediumhere, as the line is delicately walked between pop melodies and nerdyimprovisation. Some songs, (nine out of ten are named "fun") are mostdecidedly organically driven, while some are clearly more electronic.The story of the recordings is that the band took a number of differentapproaches to each composition, and the Japanese version of Customer,on Some of Us, uses the more electronic versions of the more organicsongs here and more organic versions of the more electronic songscontained here. If that's not confusing enough, a vinyl edition of therecord contains only the "electronic" songs from both. While a disclike this might be good for an afternoon read at home, I highlyrecommend playing at loud volumes to fully enjoy some of the fantasticlow frequency bass sounds and alien ticks which dance around the ears.Like a fantastic sushi dinner, at the end I'm eager for more, andunfortunately that means getting a hold of Customer's Japanese counterpart.
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