Bronze – World Arena LP
NNF283
West Coast trio Bronze have been flexing their fusion of metro-gnomic drumming, oscillator raga, hash oil free verse, and serpentine bass for seven years but sonic documentation remains sparse. Thankfully the new decade has seen them reversing this deficit – first with 2011’s Copper LP, and now their latest, World Arena. Tracked at the band’s Trojan Cavern studio/bunker in San Francisco, the record freewheels through tranced polyrhythmic sequencer meditations (“Played,” “Quality”), burnt chrome post-punk electronics (“Almost”), and jazzy, decadent nocturnes (“Dulcinea,” “Golden Handcuffs”). The way they weld home-wired circuitry with lofty poetics via intuitive group interplay is finessed and nuanced, and unusually dynamic in today’s world-gone-solo landscape. Live, they’re spellbinding, seesawing from fluid fog-machine psych to electro-modal smoke ballads, owning all zones.
Mastered by Ruud Lekx. Black vinyl LPs in jackets with cut-metal photo-collage artwork by the band, plus an 11×17 photocopied lyric sheet.