The Winks/Tights

Split

1. Abalone
2. Cyclopse
3. Castle In The Clouds
4. A Drunk Loves The Sound Of His Own Voice
5. House The Sun
6. Boxes
7. From Memory
8. Deadly Enemies/Feathered Friends
9. Swallow Small Bones
10. B Major
11. Whitethroat Babies
12. Cassowaries
13. Prey By Surprise

Exploring the space that exists between two virtues: nostalgic and innovative, Drip Audio is proud to release a dual album by two pioneering musical projects, THE WINKS and TIGHTS. Both groups share the same musical ideal - obvious, considering they share several of the same members. And both projects seep a very real, personal spirit. The Winks unfurl their butterfly wings on this, their second official release. Revealing new tricks wrapped in a historic carapace, the MANDOLIN, CELLO, and PERCUSSION trio endow with a refreshing dialect of pop language. The modern framework is there, but the sounds are different - vintage and unusual like antique arms pointing to infinite roots in time and culture - places in history obscured by dust and cobwebs, finally rediscovered, polished, and prepared for the modern world.
Persuading the theory to new levels, TIGHTS, features the cello and mandolin of THE WINKS and adds the digital stylings of live laptop processing (Andy Dixon aka: Secret Mommy). Unlike their articulate album mates, TIGHTS have chosen an avenue of loose improv, embracing the magic of chance and exploring asynchrony & poly-rhythms. This electro-acoustic unit expands on THE WINKS theme of archetypal versus conventional art forms, but broadens it by exaggerating both the timelessness and ultra-modern qualities and introducing a playful sense of musical intuition.

Both units of this split operate on the same levels of homage and modernism. They both borrow from infinite points of the past as well as explore new, unmapped musical frontiers.

PERSONNEL:

Tyr Jami - cello
Paul Patko - drums, percussion (tracks: 1-7)
Andy Dixon - electronics (tracks: 8-13)
Todd MacDonald - mandolin

Press

"Two EP-length offerings on one disc, from a pair of new Vancouver bands that you'll be hearing bigger things from soon. The Winks make charmingly bent pop that fizzes and burns at the same time, while Tights work up grand ruminations from grainy electroacoustics.”- The Globe and Mail

"The perfect album to put on in order to give your buddy who's on mushrooms heart palpitations and the perfect album to ease him back into his/her happy place. And visa versa." - Red Cat Records

"...they have a knack for finding beauty amid unlikely circumstances." - The Toronto Star

"Childish blah-de-blah...odd instrument mash-ups...equal weird goodness." - Vue Weekly (Edmonton)

"Cute can make you ugly quick as a pixie stick sugar crash. Cute in the case of the Winks cuts its sweet with enough salt to keep you snacking for hours. Not unlike a car trip sing-a-long with Ida and the Unicorns, the four Canadian West coast winkers put their guy/gal harmonies overtop acoustic strings (mandolin & cello) and sprinkle with kitchen sink percussion. Tyr Jami and Todd Macdonald’s songs go from mock mythic (“Cyclopse” and “Castle in the Clouds”) to stranger and creepier over the course of their seven tracks. On “Boxes,” for example, they sing extra-phonetically about “(t)rees made of aleeumineeium/The centrepiece was made of tubes.” - Exclaim!


Album Review: Exclaim!
Album Review: Only Angels Have Wings

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