Over the course of their lush, fiercely original sophomore albumåÊAlthaea, London based duo Trailer Trash Tracys condense a number of disparate styles into music that thrillingly broaches the void between figuration and abstraction. While undeniably beautiful and quite often infectious in parts, this is certainly not pop music by any traditional definition; rather, it appeals to the more intuitive of mind and wild at heart. More than simply becoming a philosophical exercise however, the result is their most ambitious and idiosyncratic body of work to date, one which operates at the very limits of what pop music can be. Their debut,åÊEster,åÊreleased in 2012, manifested the band‰۪s approach to making music as a fine balance between chaos and order, laying out a dense and dreamlike ecosystem of Sufi poetry, Solfeggio scales and, floating above it all, Susanne Aztoria‰۪s otherworldly yet emotionally charged vocals. Early singles such asåÊStrangling Good GuysåÊandåÊYou Wish You Were RedåÊproved to be outliers - rather than simply making lo-fi dream pop, the band were instead aiming for something far more subconscious and esoteric, extracting the essence of a perfect pop song and recasting it in a different light entirely. ‰ÛÏIt cemented what we are about musically: diverse, cinematic and with a pop curiosity‰۝, the band muse now. ‰ÛÏMaking it was a very important process for us ‰ÛÒåÊAlthaeaåÊsounding more mature like it does probably wouldn‰۪t have happened if it wasn‰۪t foråÊEster‰۪s mistakes and beauty. Initially conceived as a soundtrack for a film by esteemed cult Filipino director Raya Martin,åÊAlthaea, sees the band continue their investigations into the farther flung reaches of pop music, with stunning results. IfåÊEsteråÊwas adventurous and exploratory in nature,åÊAlthaeaåÊis its grown up and sophisticated older sister: having embarked on their singular artistic course, with the new album Trailer Trash Tracys consolidate their strikingly unique language and tonal style. Spanning 10 deeply esoteric tracks,åÊAlthaeaåÊsees the band drift futher afield from traditional song structures to create a new aural lexicon of their own, one as influenced by Filipino carnival music and Latin rhythms as it was by Japanese tropical music from the 80s. The songs demonstrate a characteristic fusion of melody and dissonance, but this time round, they are more amorphous in the way they occupy space, neatly colliding the elegance of modernism with sharply futuristic structures. Much like the ambiguous, seemingly random song titles ‰ÛÒåÊSingdrome, Money for MoondogsåÊnothing inåÊAlthaea'såÊworld is quite what it seems. Songs likeåÊSmoked SilveråÊchase each other in an opulent haze of seesawing synths and stuttering beats, stubbornly refusing to resolve themselves, while others, likeåÊBetty‰۪s Cavatina, seem to heve been built on structures so intricate and fragile they seem in perpetual danger of collapsing in on themselves at any given moment. Even at their most outwardly pop ‰ÛÒ the pristineåÊEden MachineåÊfor instance, or the swooningåÊKalesa, there is a baroque splendour, and heightened sensuality, stemming from Jimmy Lee‰۪s resolutely off-kilter instrumentation and the fact that quite often Aztoria seems to be singing in an alien language entirely of her own creation. The interplay of light and dark, the foreign and the familiar, brings forth an album with manifold pleasures, one which rewards repeated listening and further exploration. And even though withåÊAlthaeaåÊTrailer Trash Tracys seek to disorient and upend traditional strictures of pop, they have, in their own way, delivered a modern classic anyway. ‰ÛÏWhen people hear the record we want them to be transported to a place that‰۪s romantic, exotic, unfamiliar but real and welcoming‰۝, they muse. ‰ÛÏSomeone also mentioned that our album could have been the soundtrack for a film like Wong Kar Wai‰۪såÊDays of Being WildåÊor Ishamel Bernal. If people feel like this when listening to our music then that‰۪s more than we have ever anticipated‰۝. LP - Indies-Only Limited Heavyweight Turquoise Vinyl with Poster and Download.
