PAINT – Whip of an Ear Review
Pedrum Siadatian’s new PAINT album trades a sun-soaked haze for the strange voices and nocturnal atmosphere of New York.
PAINT’s previous discography feels soaked in a solar desert haze, but his new album Whip of an Ear takes you into a dark, sleazy underworld. This atmospheric contrast present in the music seems evident given the recent move of Pedrum Siadatian from Los Angeles to New York. Recorded solely at night, the art-pop album feels like a long walk home after a night out, giggling at the absurdity of existence or sharing a cigarette with a stranger.
While Pedrum’s work spans across other projects with Allah-Las and THiQ, PAINT’s sound uniquely holds itself on its own accord through synth and static. Whip of an Ear in particular emphasises its vocal importance, frequently indulging in a variety of character personas and cadences. The voices often feel juxtaposed between a broken voicemail and soft whispers just lingering in the distance. This use of vocals is one of the many aspects that makes this album particularly notable and exploratory. It makes the listener stop and listen intently, haunted by the conversations of strangers in the passerby or broken tape recordings from decades past.
In the first song ‘The Way You Look’ with Discovery Zone, the vocals already take precedence and draw you in. Pedrum’s musical inspiration from the 1980s of Psychic TV and Bongwater comes to fruition in this track, as it sets the scene with the experimental rock and avant-garde narration.
Later, in the track ‘Year of the Rat’, this mischief of the street life and uptempo beat bring a tad bit of whimsy as though someone is inviting you out to play. This is starkly contrasted by the song following it, ‘Blinking Brick’. The playfulness is then countered into confusion and hallucinatory chaos of the industrial depths of the city. Ultimately, it starts to tempt the listener to become engulfed in a night of strange encounters and curiosity.
Pedrum has noted that many of the songs on Whip of an Ear began as fragments of poems. One track in particular, ‘Gently Breaking Wave’, was even written by Los Angeles writer John Tottenham. Some lyrics in particular written in that song, ‘yours was a cruel sweetness’ and ‘closeness means chaos’, colour the song as a commentary on love, dread and guilt. The samples of whistles over the beat appear like a blur in the fast pace of life in the city, holding multiple truths at once.
Things thereafter turn particularly eerie in the track ‘CB Jeebies’. It’s a concoction of radio voices, sound waves, synth-jazz and downtempo drums layered in an ominous fog. This foggy surrealism furthers the plotline of this city street-rat persona. I’d imagine hearing these tones in a state of half-wakefulness on the couch as the sound of an infomercial is left lingering in the background.
In its fullness, this album presents as particularly important for our time in the techno-age, where the line between what is real and what is fake becomes obscured. It’s tempered with a futuristic electronic murkiness, yet still leaves remnants of ’90s-era digital optimism for all to hear.