Review Summary: Trying to fuse trip-hop, ambient and electro and making it!
For those unfamiliar (myself included) with this/these guy(s), the name The Cool Moonmist Mountain Band (TCMMB) could indicate some kind of a Southern Rock jam band, or Grateful Dead-type psych. Nothing wrong with any of those, mind you, on the contrary, but that is not what is going on here on their/his Fire Sign EP.
First of all, TCMMB is mainly the project of Seattle WA electro musician Jared Sand, but then this isn’t electro-pop either... To make things a bit more confusing, this sophomore release is just Sand in the studio multi-tracking everything, while his initial release, Live In Studio 11/14 is exactly what the title says, but with a help of other collaborators.
So what exactly is going on here? To put it simply, some quite exquisite uptempo trip-hop ambient variations, think Massive Attack, The Chemical Brothers in a chill mode or even more specifically, The Orb at their peak. So the mention of psychedelia wasn’t that far of anyway...
The key with Sand or TCMMB is that it is neither any of the genres mentioned just by themselves but quite a precise median of all of those put together - there are all those dub elements trip-hop likes to include so much there are the dance elements The Chemical Brothers are so good at (though at some sort of a gentler pace) and there’s all that trip-ness so characteristic of The Orb at their prime.
And it all works - the elastic, elongated rhythms of “Dope”, the rhythmic patterns of “Lofi Spliff”, the pulsating dub bass of “Super Automatic” and the spaced-out vibes and acoustic percussion of “Let the Dust Settle”.
One big problem though - it is too short. More, please.
