One Track Mind

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

[ download ]

When one takes the music of Barcelona’s Delorean for a spin, the experience is something akin to an immersion course in the highlights of contemporary independent music. Within the foursome’s kaleidoscopic pop there are strains of everything from Eskimo Recordings’ Balearic beats, to the weirded out samples of the glo-fi/chillwave set, and a taste for the post-everything mishmash espoused by artists such as Caribou and Animal Collective–all whirled into a brilliant vibrant whole. Vocalist and bassist Ekhi Lopetegi describes the Basque act’s music as being about “love and joy as feelings so strong they distort memory,” and lofty though that may sound, it’s an idea that really does shine through in their music.

Delorean’s third LP, Subiza, will be released on True Panther Sounds on June 8th and taps into Lopetegi’s spirit of ecstasy quite nicely. It is the most focused, confident effort they have put together since their inception ten years ago, with tracks like “Stay Close” practically exploding with their colorful spirit.

On this song, nearly all of the elements are ramped up as though amplified by a steady, slow twist of a volume knob. The song, too, feels as though its intensity ratchets up in this fashion, as chopped samples and darting synthesizer notes leap through the air like over-caffeinated kids in an inflatable bounce house. There are a couple of moments within “Stay Close” when Delorean hits the release valve, just so they can go through the fun of building up the pressure anew. Delorean’s approach capitalizes on the future hinted at twenty years ago by two distinct camps of musicmakers: the drug-frenzied Madchester kids on the one hand and the blissed-out shoegazers like Chapterhouse on the other. Delorean is where the twain shall meet–in a heavenly, body rockin’ blaze.