by Ljubinko Zivkovic (@zivljub)
Coming up with something new in modern music is a long-winding process that doesn't happen overnight and essentially has to rely on what has come before, no matter what. The steps such artists take can be incremental, or more leaping, but it is a process. Smoke Bellow, the Baltimore-via-Australia core duo of Christian Best and Meredith McHugh, seem to have understood that process, consciously or instinctively (or both) when they developed their fourth and final album, Structurally Sound. And yes, it is structurally sound, as the duo along with drummer/percussionist and vocalist Jen Kirby and six additional collaborators (including members of Sun Watchers), have come up with a wide-ranging, intensely intriguing combination of mainly eighties sources, something that on a first listen can sound like a cross between Talking Heads and Devo.
Yet, when you dig deeper they use a wider sourcing of post-punk, angular rhythms taken from R&B, funk, even disco, with a serious underlying understanding of modern classical music, particularly minimalist composers like Terry Riley and Steve Reich, where rhythmic repetition plays an important part. Best and McHugh have not only digested all these to some incompatible sources, but also to what they have done previously and have realized that, indeed, the devil is in the detail, escaping the key hurdle with rhythmic repetition - redundancy.
Complex arrangements abound throughout the nine compositions (that is what they are), particularly evident on tracks like the opening “Marm & Toast” and minimalist-infused “Vaso”. With such an intricate and natural flow to all the angular elements present, it’s no wonder it took the duo two years to construct the music presented here. What we get is music that doesn't shy away from intricacy, but is, at the same time, thoroughly easy on the ear.