Motor Skills
Brooklyn, NY
“Mind-twitching and light-bending”
Here’s a legitimate theory: those who listen to French Miami’s mind-twitching and light-bending EP, Motor Skills, react with dizzy images of this promising group’s live shows. The medley of electronic psychedelia, post-punk and hints of dub skewer the brain and could’ve triggered hungry throbbing from Timothy Leary’s acid-ridden temporal lobe, or sparked Ken Kesey to reminisce those magical mystery days on the Prankster bus.
This Brooklyn-based quartet has created a solid musical sojourn that reaches galactic levels. Simultaneously, they begin with a concrete rock band formula and then ascend into chaotic abstraction. The synths sweat and pulsate like a fevered brain, and the progressive guitar work spits rock star riffs and sails smoothly along a sea of lightly reverberated vocals and art folk rock harmonies.
The opener, “Suge Night Driving,” eases listeners into near paralysis and then builds up into an experiential anthem of aggressive synthesizers and keyboards, minimalist guitars and enduring drums. Delving further, it goes from post-punk to a psychedelic journey. Toward the end, French Miami navigates a five-minute space-rock experiment with the track “Jon Odyssey.” If this is the beginning of this band’s musical travels, it is only curious and exciting where else they will take everyone next. (Death by Audio)
Recorded and mixed in by Phil Manley at Studio SQ in San Francisco, CA // Mastered by Roger Seibel at SAE Mastering