Sparkle Gang

Apr
16
posted by Reggie Maurice

With a bold opening groove underpinning a killer melody line, this song grabs your attention and white knuckles it for all three minutes. Every few bars a new element is added to maintain interest, be it a (very) interesting vocal harmony, a glitchy synth line or an acoustic guitar. It is the greatest kind of sonic mash, one that assumes the best from us; that we can handle it.

Sparkle Gang is Mel Stringer, and not much is known except that she wrote this song on the 22nd floor of a Surfer’s Paradise apartment building, has buckets of talent, and a unique taste in album art. The tune is out through ZZAAPP Records, the Darwin-based project of Kris Keogh (who interestingly enough put out an incredible ambient album a few years ago with New Weird Australia that involved processed and cut-up harp sounds. It was great then, and it’s aged as well as a 1959 Penfolds Grange).

This release is more interesting still because they’ve included Mel’s original stripped-back acoustic demo for the track (which is stunning, incidentally) and comparing demo to final product really serves to highlight how much a song can evolve during the recording process. Like language, music isn’t static but alive and mutating constantly n dis iz wat makes music heapz gr8 lol*. There’s a soundcloud full of her very, very, very pretty acoustic wares that you should spend a while involved with.

*[Editors Note]: Sorry

0 Comments
Uncategorized



Have your say:
CAPTCHA Image