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Written by Rudy Zapf Thursday, 27 April 2006 07:50

This works for the first six tracks or so, but after that, the listener’s patience is more often punished rather than rewarded.

The artists who comprise the group Flying are just that: artists. Both their debut album and Web site seem at least as concerned with the layering of mental imagery as with the development of soundscapes. The title comes from an excerpt written by Buckminster Fuller about the odyssey of Spaceship Earth, and Flying’s mysterious chain of disheveled harmonies seems itself to be a string of self-conscious letters sent to other worlds.

Band members take on the egalitarian proposal of sharing vocals and noise-producing tasks. Eliot Krimsky and Eben Portnoy alternately shuffle and enunciate their way through stories of pantomimed love (“Last Trick”) and Peter Pan denials (“Our Cave”), while Sara Magenheimer comes across sweetly as a girl who likes to sing, but doesn’t realize (or care) that she is often off key. Recorded on beaches, in fields, on farms, and at home, the onion skin of incidental sounds supports the narratives of the songs, even when the vocals fail to make themselves understood. The songs themselves, a collage of folksy homegrown colored with art school contrivances, soar like paper airplanes until they suddenly crash into windows. This works for the first six tracks or so, but after that, the listener’s patience is more often punished rather than rewarded.

Good natured, well intentioned, overly self-conscious, abruptly discordant—the recording sounds almost exactly like a self-portrait of most art school kids. Put tersely, it’s off-kilter on purpose. The sound of bells, glass, old accordions, and toy pianos only amplify the impression that these artists don’t care how odd they sound; they just want to communicate to the other dream-y spirits out their in the universe.

Purchase downloads for this artist at our BurnLounge.