Long before Ra Ra Riot performed a single note of its dancetronic third album, Beta Love (Barsuk), the band talked at great length about the need for a change. The viscerally charged chamber-pop outfit had maintained a steady course after the tragic 2007 drowning death of beloved drummer John Pike, blossomed on its 2008 Barsuk full-length debut, The Rhumb Line, and flourished with a variety of subsequent beatkeepers, but everyone felt the inevitable tug of creative evolution after 2010 sophomore album The Orchard. The roles of violinist Rebecca Zeller and guitarist Milo Bonacci changed the most dramatically; with the dominance of the synthesizer on Beta Love, Bonacci was forced to radically reimagine/rewrite his guitar contributions and take on more expansive sonic duties, while Zeller was freed up to explore new approaches with her instrument and the spare strings the band utilized. Bassist Mathieu Santos will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Ra Ra Riot feature.
Santos: This was another pleasant surprise I happened upon while meaning only to browse at a record shop. But when I found that a label called Death Waltz had pressed John Carpenter’s DIY Escape From New York score (on some ripping orange vinyl, no less), what choice did I have? (Come to find out, Death Waltz Records specialize in pressing cult-movie soundtracks.) Carpenter and Alan Howarth, the soundtrack’s engineer, essentially scored some of the film in real time, listening to the audio while fiddling around with just an analog synthesizer and a drum machine. There’s some really fun, spooky, sparse stuff here.
Video after the jump.
