The Newest Noise for Your Listening Pleasure! | By Nicholas Senior
Collapsing Scenery
Brooklyn, New York
Stress Positions | June 28 | Metropolitan Indian
RIYL: Love as a weapon. Robotic hearts. Cursive references.
Pick up Stress Positions HERE!
Art is hard, at least art that works both as an objectively pleasing enterprise and as something worthy of careful critique. Collapsing Scenery utilize the form and function of electronic sounds to create something distinctly and beautifully human. Stress Positions is a complex, sonically dense electronic album, but the way those traditional electronic instruments are used defies simple categorization and, more importantly, feels different. The why is in the how. “The jam that turned into ‘Metaphysical Cops’ [from 2016’s God’s Least Favorite], for example, was recorded in pitch darkness while we wore military-grade night vision goggles,” vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Reggie Debris notes. “That engendered not only a strange headspace but also slowed us down, as we had to adjust to seeing our interfaces and our own hands through this surreal, infrared lens.” Why make it so hard on themselves? That’s part of the fun, and that playfulness oozes through the speakers. For all the focus on electronics and production, Stress Positions is centered on the desire to tear down power structures and empower the expression of love as the highest good. Collapsing Scenery are like genius-level robots who only want to love somebody while the world falls apart.
