03/28/2002

Reader, Chicago
28 March 2002

www.chireader.com

Spot Check: section 3, pg. 6

Ribbon Effect, Tiny Hairs 3/30, Empty Bottle.
This is a party for the two initial releases by the Chicago label False Walls; both Tiny Hairs's second release, Subtle Invisible Bodies, and Ribbon Effect's EP98 (recorded before last year's debut album, Slip) come out April 1. Both bands rely on improvisation to generate ideas; though Ribbon Effect consider themselves a song-oriented band, none of the four long tracks on the EP coalesces into a pop structure. Nonetheless they seem the more light-footed of the two, percussive and sometimes even effervescent as keyboards and drums interlace; the very analog accordion challenges the electronics to a playful duel. Tiny Hairs go into darker territory; the tracks unfold gradually and with a slow pulse; if you follow Peter Rosenbloom's violin it behaves like a fairy light, getting a listener more and more lost in the moonlit forest of Charles King's magical miscellany ("electronics, turntable, shortwave, electromagnetic bicycle/shelving/fan/jar of bolts").

- Monica Kendrick

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