Discotays—a Navajo Nation-based electronic music duo who might be called “electro-punk” if their work was narrower in scope, if it was simply comprised of equal parts youth and energy—have the stated goals of improving queer visibility on the reservation and continuing to broaden its musical palette beyond heavy metal and country music. That might sound like not only a lot of cultural work for one band to undertake, but also an astonishing amount of cultural perspective to transform into art. But Brad Charles and Hansen Ashley pull it off, the transformation into art, at least, in a mere 22 minutes on Concealer, without slogans, testimonial, or overt autobiography, instead with music that is personal, intuitive, and impressionistic, that uses fairly recognizable signifiers (drum machine, synth textures, melodies stuck halfway between rudimentary and holy) to signify unfamiliar places, initially, shimmering mirages for a few moments and then grounded by echoes of a particular everyday.
Opening track “Woke Up On The Mesa” is the mirage, an overture of escalating and de-escalating synths, and while this functions as musical shorthand for greeting the new day, the title suggests that Discotays aren’t aiming to capture a blossoming internal geography, that their awaking eyes reveal a sensual external world. There’s nothing bleary-eyed or myopic about the music. Later songs might suggest a certain sluggishness, malaise, but the art behind that effect is full of intention.
After the rattling, glowing opening, the day could lead anywhere. There’s an inexpensiveness to the sounds on the songs that follow, but they can be just as evocative and don’t necessarily represent dashed hopes. The clarity of the arrangements is what makes the ideas striking, the cultural synthesis engaging. Songs will begin with a drum loop and often gather very little more, maybe just an intertextual element that suggests a personal response to My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. “Had Her Way” botches the name of Haddaway and recycles the words to his “What Is Love” as a more human variation on the tormented computer soul narrator of Vitalic’s “Poney”; “$30” transforms what sound like installment plan advertisements into the parking garage echoes of Burial.
Discotays sound like exemplary Internet-age musicians, but that’s just a hunch. They might have learned everything they know about their craft on a computer (from inspiration to instrument) but whatever the case they’re artists, not trashmen, taking only what they need and giving it back in a new form, austere, purified, but still hinting at a deeper, messier anxiety. The duo’s attention to mood never fails, and the tempo doesn’t even change for the would-be single, “John’s Creeping,” which, with its call to “sing for the misfits and sing for the freaks,” could be their “Born This Way” if the words were sung like a declaration. They’re not, they’re more empathetic, and wisely nothing in the hazy rendering tries to celebrate this fact.
Concealer is one of those exercises in minimalist aesthetics that betrays a deeper well of talent, an understanding of the process of subtraction and the importance of what’s left out (also owned by those minimalist painters who begin with representational art). For the past few years, Atlas Sound has been the standard point of comparison for all music personal, lo-fi and self-released (“bedroom” art, if you will, though that’s not necessarily Discotays’ intended domain). Charles and Ashley succeed by that standard and have a lot of the same qualities: an adventurous spirit tempered by a willingness to commit to a chosen style for a certain duration (22 minutes, here), to edit their ideas but not let that stop them from creating a varied body of work.
That body of work isn’t very broad yet, and it’s exciting to encounter a good new band for whom no very precise future expectations can exist. With work as restrained as Concealer, they always seem on the verge of a hundred different things, even effervescent pop. You might check out the recent single “Shante” for another side of their talent (rhythmically insistent post-punk), one that probably translates better live. But Concealer stands as a very good headphone listen; maybe that makes it bedroom art after all, but I wouldn’t bet it was primarily conceived there.
http://holypagerecords.bandcamp.com/album/concealer
http://discotays.bandcamp.com/
