SCENE: Chicago in the mid-’90s, three indie rockers sit huddled around a Tascam Porta One 4 track (the one with batteries and strap pegs). Their band, Number One Cup, is recording a repetitive cowbell rhythm track, which they will then send to other bands to do with what they wish, as a skeleton for whatever song they want. Although they ended up only releasing their own song and one by their friends Red Red Meat (who were also from Chicago, so maybe they didn’t even have to go to the post office; this was all pre-internet for all intents and purposes), it provided an interesting model for the myriad directions a song could potentially go with some common DNA.
SCENE: Seattle, present day. A figure leans over a laptop and presses the space bar. The tracks begin. There’s no cowbell to be heard anywhere on Weird Hill’s “Left in the Sun.” Instead, P[arker] Hill asks a somewhat different question: What would happen if you came up with a nice glitchy beat and then used it as the skeleton for three different songs? What would happen if you played all three at once? Recalling the sci-fi menace of vintage Giorgio Moroder, the poppy swing of various Morr Music artists (and the Morr Music comps were always the most fun anyway) and delayed Ulrich Schnauss guitar(esque) hooks, “Left in the Sun” has the ambition of a split screen arthouse film, with disparate elements coalescing, interacting, and then dissipating. Each of the individual threads would be nice and entertaining on their own; taken together, it’s really quite lovely. FIN.