Pitchfork

Pylon returned this year courtesy of the DFA's reissue of their album Gyrate, which has been augmented with bonus tracks and bumped up to Gyrate Plus. It's exhilarating that a band with a sound this warped and hypnotic was doing their thing in a small college town in the early 1980s; music didn't travel so easily in those days, so the fact that they were able to formulate such a distinctive aesthetic-- one that seems so contemporary in the present moment-- is impressive. Pere Ubu comes to mind when listening to "Dub", the second track on Gyrate Plus, not just because of Dub Housing, but also in the way the song leaps along with a strange gait that shouldn't work but does. Trebly guitars are totally wired, drums alternate between near-disco and herky-jerky pauses for quick rolls, and Vanessa Briscoe Hay is snarling something about eating dub for breakfast. Speaking of Hay, Bradford Cox of Deerhunter and Atlas Sound interviewed her and Pylon bassist Michael Lachowski and posted an mp3 of the conversation (which is laced with choice musical bits) over at the band's blog.

 

 

[from Gyrate Plus; out now on DFA]