A FRAMES
BLACK FOREST (SUB POP)
Having each cut their musical teeth many years prior on bands like Cows, Butthole Surfers, and Scratch Acid, Seattle's A Frames formed during the late '90s and began collectively designing their own brand of stripped-down neo-modern experimental noise.
Erin Sullivan's angular, angry guitars and bleak, deadpan lyrics march over Lars Finberg's robotic trashcan beats and Min Yee's stirring, sexy low end.
Over a handful of now collectible 7"s and two albums, the A Frames have issued minimalist, propulsive songs about apocalyptic cultural shifts and surveillance strategies.
With Black Forest, the band's third full-length and their first for Sub Pop, they continue to engage thick, rich chords of chaos to illustrate ideas about the commonalities of various existences.
Though more textural and complex, the third record retains the rawness of their earliest releases.
The A Frames make anachronistic analog dance hits and post-modern blues ballads for binary code casualties.
By obliquely referencing the past in their surreal allegories of the future, A Frames defy both time and place.