Drugstore Racer - "To Lose Us" (Zenapolae 2003, zcdr1030, CDR)
Uploaded to Aural Innovations: July 2004
Drugstore Racer (Dominic Traverzo), is a musician, poet, and film maker. This former frontman for the emocore band The Getaway Plan (1999-2001) has been expermenting with sound for over three years. He has evolved from making disjointed mixtapes with a broken backmasking 4-track to working with turntables, synths, software, and even the occasional pots and pans to create what he describes as mood-driven atmospherics.
First song, Ishiguro, bells but nice bells, keys but nice keys, this is freakin' good. See it's Not so hard, Amazin! Second song, Red Rooms, this is what I call "of quality", no messin about just the good stuff. Boy, this makes alot of music from this genre I've listened to recently pale in comparison. Ya know when you listen to this sorta thing you wanna completly GO somewhere else and this does that. No uneccesary farts and bleeps, just the good stuff. Song three, Page Down, this is all farts and bleeps with nothin else, but it works?!?
Dominic states that "I approach my music through the experience of memory and emotion. The music I make has to connect on a deep personal level with a present of past experience of mine. Otherwise, how can it transcend to the listener? What I mean by 'transcend to the listener' is that the music surpasses the artist into the listener. If the music is not felt strongly by the artist, if it is just thrown together as filler or not thought out as to how it makes a deep connection with the artist, I don't feel that it can connect with the listener." Track four, Sugared, oh yeah, here we go, this is nice... killer drone, the bass endy stuff. Track five, Crashing, funky, Get It, freaky styley.
Dominic goes on to say "When you find a sound that makes your head nod, makes your eyes open wide, makes you want to press rewind, it sustains you. It gives you what you need at that precise time and could hold you for as long as you let it. You feed off of it." Dominic, you're a freakin genius.
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Reviewed by Carlton Crutcher