Lucky Dragons - Widows / YACHT - I Believe In You. Your Magic Is Real.

One of my favourite things about bands on Marriage Recs is their irreverence. That is to say, for groups like YACHT and Lucky Dragons music is a playground, where the movements of everyday life can be swung and distorted, emphasised or repeated without detriment to the sentiment of the song. Lucky Dragons in particular make music in pieces, the various components glued together with an exuberance that makes me imagine Luke Fishbeck (the Lucky Dragon) prostrate on his knees, deep in concentration with glue still on his fingers. Live Lucky Dragons use a magical carpet, upon which all whom sit will whenceforth gain the mighty power of music:


Like, it's through people that the pieces of life come together and make sense. Like, every sound is already out there, humming and buzzing, just waiting for a human being to collate it into a scheme, to turn a piece into a jigsaw. That every sound is there at our disposal, and with laptops we can become the Gods of found sounds. As on 'Sheep And Sneezes', the first track off Lucky Dragon's last album, Widows, where sneezes speeded up suddenly become music. In fact, throughout the whole record there's barely a cognant word spoken, just whizzing voices and dreamy humming: human humming on a par with electronic noise - neither directly mean anything, both can affect the listener; a melding of man and machine for the greater benefit of the race.

Or something. Most of the time it works; sometimes you want someone to actually say something. Often the record resembles Caribou's kaleidascopic Up In Flames, with it's similarly hushed vocals, flutes and understated acoustic guitars. Yet the best track off that record had lyrics that added to the poingnancy of the song, Koushik murmuring over 'Jacknuggeted',

"I met you
then we fell apart /
Now I'm nothing more
than a broken heart"

At times you want the pieces to compose themselves: 'V Pattern' exists as a collection of noises, horns and slight percussion, that exist not side by side but in spite of each other. Eats Tapes did a banging megamix of this record, pulling together the found sounds, trumpets and little unidentifiable noises to create a totally bitchin' techno track. The last proper track on Widows, 'Snowing Circle', could also be it's best, a song where Fishbeck brings coherence to a song without the need for outside intervention, magic carpet or otherwise.

Eats Tapes also appear on YACHT's (aka Jona Bechtolt) latest, I Believe In You. Your Magic Is Real, introduced on 'It's All The Same Price' with a brief, "ladies and gentlemen, Eats Tapes" as the track explodes into that stupidly bouncy, instantly recognisable Eats Tapes beat, sirens et al. After all, for bands like Lucky Dragons and YACHT music is a plaything - why bother to pretend there's any distance between the band and the listener when you've released a record specifically for a listener: YACHT opened his last album, Mega, by chirping "Hello?".

Yet sounds do sound right in a certain order, YACHT more than proved that with his work with The Blow: 2006's Paper Television was a giddy mix of silly beats and meaningful lyrics. I Believe In You... comes to life when Bechtolt's bouncy enthusiasm totally pervades the music. 'Drawing In The Dark' starts with the title drawled in a self-consciously lazy falsetto until Bechtolt exclaims "wait!" and slips in a beat, the same words eventually reappearing at half speed.

I have a track of YACHT's that samples an argument between Devendra Banhart and Andy Cadic of Vetiver, one excitedly telling the other, "it's just music!". The second last track on I Believe In You... thanks a long list of people (including Thanksgiving's Adrian Orange and Mt Eerie's Phil Elverum), ending with "you, thank you!". What makes Marriage Recs, Lucky Dragons and YACHT all so great is that they can be inovative without excluding their audience. In fact the audience, the listener, you and me, are the most important part (no more so than in a Lucky Dragons live show). Making records for records sake is great 'n' all, but the really fun thing about art is the sense of community. It is, after all, just music.