There’s something special about this two-song, ten-minute EP from figure eight, Oakland’s optimistic ambient doomers. (Can we make that a new genre just for them?) And here’s why!
Kicking off with a twinkling drone and some dark echoing strums down below, “until the sun swallows the earth” has the right ingredients to whet your solar-system-sized appetite. Subtle, quiet guitar crunching and Abby Goeser’s angelic voice enter to complete the picture. But don’t get used to that: The drone gets replaced by a single-note-indie-jangle-eighth-note guitar line that transforms the feel to something more lively without losing the generally persisting darkness the song needs, promises and delivers. My favorite piece of Nash Rood’s instrumentation? The fuzz bass that gently glides around underneath it all, having already been swallowed by the Sun. What’s left on Earth gets swallowed with the tempo change at 3:33. Fantastic arrangement decision there.
In flies “hummingbird”, which is less hard hitting and more drifting than “until the sun swallows the earth”. There’s a calmness in this number that I visualize as a reflection of our tiny winged friend hovering while it laps up its sweet nectar. Goeser’s ethereal voice here is one of the instruments, but let’s consider this fundamentally as an atmospheric guitar song. Big sweeping waves of guitar ebb and flow around the clean picking, with sustained high notes droning on for intensity. Toward the end of the third minute, the slightly out of time drum fills start jolting you from your trance just in time for the track’s biggest moment.
Recorded, mixed and mastered at Bay Area’s Bubudzuki Studios, you can get a 7” vinyl, a cassette with an o-card, or just the digital version on Bandcamp. Catch figure eight in Philly on April 2nd, and take a listen to the new EP below.
Written by Greg Gobel
