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Horde of Two
Guitar and Bass Actions
Independent
The other day I plunked in this instrumental CD called "Guitar and Bass Actions" by Wendy Atkinson and David Lester of Mecca Normal, who call themselves Horde of Two. The first song had me mesmerized, its bass sounds all distant and murky, like something calling out from the ocean. The guitar definitely had its charm too, the end of the fourth track finds it teetering on the brink of a pop song and then collapsing into a manic cartoonish slobber for pretty much the entirety of the next song. The whole ordeal evokes that kind of mood you get when you put on the first Silver Mt. Zion record. It gives you the feeling it was recorded during long isolated jams, probably without many words, just the slow release of esoteric musical ideas that have been gestating throughout days and weeks. Just knives on guitars, and the black and white flickering of some aging horror flick. I do feel a little too much has been made of them composing spontaneously whilst viewing a Hitchcock film, though, and I'm not entirely convinced it deserves as much credit for this as it’s given. Then I listen to an interview with Wendy Atkinson on CKUT radio about her latest solo release "Pink Noise." Atkinson says "I just wanted the sound like somebody's in their apartment just noodling on an instrument and there's all these sounds going on around them." Even with the addition of Lester, that sentence sums up the sound of this record too. Still, Wendy is wonderful with her basses, electric, acoustic and double. And David's guitars resonate like his paintings, long thick strokes of colour, equal parts mischievous, maudlin, and haunting. When one is smiling at you from a foot away the other can only be heard crying through the walls of the next room. The constant variations between these extremes are what this record thrives off of. It's less about the melody and more about the movement. Horde of Two is a fitting name for them. And I like their record a lot; it's ripe with personality and authenticity.
Travis Gooden
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