WIXQ DJ's Recommended Music

Empath - Visitor

Posted: 3/31/2022 by dj furniture ( See All) Show:
(2022) If you saw the visuals attached to Empath’s work before you heard their punky noise pop, you could almost mistake them for a classic New Age act. Their earliest two projects are both titled Crystal Reality, and the liner notes for these releases list the astrological signs of the band members. 2018’s Environments borrowed its name and graphic design from Atlantic Records’ long-running 70’s ambient record series. Their breakout EP, Liberating Guilt and Fear, featured Indian drone instruments tuned to frequencies purported to free the listener from guilt and fear. And their first full length, released in 2019, was branded as Active Listening: Night On Earth, inviting the consumer to commune with the music.
Visitor, the West Philadelphia band’s second LP, carries on the band’s tradition of ambient and punk reference points. Although the album doesn’t fit in with the explicitly New Age nomenclature of earlier releases, it contains Empath’s fullest musical synthesis of their seemingly opposed reference points. Earlier releases could scan as delightfully kitschy in their use of birdsong and other field recordings, but on Visitor the ambience feels more essential to the songwriting. Empath still sounds like Empath, but the noise feels sweeter, more pillowy, and more poppy. There seems to be a deeper attentiveness to the way the texture of the noise shifts in relation to Garrett Koloski’s powerful drumming.
The first four tracks showcase Empath’s newfound softness remarkably well. They are the most approachable songs of the bands career, emphasizing the “pop” side of their noise pop. Things get weirder from there, from the Deerhoof-like yelping of “Corner of Surprise” to the pure ambient bliss of the instrumental “V.” And on the closer, “Paradise,” the band shows of their technical chops, with Koloski drumming in perfect unison with Catherine Elicson’s jumpy guitar soloing. After two minutes of wild beauty, the song dissolves into a chorus of frogs and slowed-down chimes. It’s bizarre, but it works; and it’s an exclamation point on an album that cements Empath’s place as one of Philly’s most unique-sounding bands.

Recommended If You Like: Deerhoof, A Sunny Day In Glasgow, Early MBV
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