GAK picked up on TV on The Radio back in 2003, digging their “Young Liars” ep heavily and trying to spread the love. He doled out the track “Satellite” on his side of our Dirty Monkey Bugspray Fun 2003 best-of double disc cd (I probably still have a copy or two kicking around if anyone missed it). I can’t say I was as enamored as he was… at first. But “Satellite” eventually stuck in my craw, and with GAK’s hot anticipation of this, their first full-length “Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes”, I too was soon clamoring for more. Not only wasn’t I disappointed, but the album solidified the band’s awesomeness even further. The opening track, the grinding, deep-horn heavy “The Wrong Way” get in through your ear and slowly starts creeping through your body, that reverberating bass creating a tingly warm sensation.
“Staring at the Sun”, which follows, is comparatively sparse, a rich, but downplayed background of sounds seems almost disparate from the layering of vocals, creating a strange sensation of an a Capella group with musical accompaniment (yes, I know). The entire album really focuses on the Tunde Adebimpe’s smooth voice often backed with Kyp Malone’s falsetto, the two jockeying back and forth and heavily layering, often doubling back upon one another, really creating an impressive depth to every song. The music, though far from shoddy by any means, really resides in the background. It’s sonic experimental, fuzzing out guitars with loops and beats, and a wide variety of instruments pitching in for variety. Though “Dreams” isn’t my favourite track, it’s probably the most impressive example of the power of TVotR’s sound, while “Ambulance”, a true a Capella track, is shiver inducing in it’s beauty and charm.
For some reason, I’ve missed out on the follow up albums - Return to Cookie Mountain (2006), and Dear Science (2008) - something I keep meaning to rectify, because this is just some impressive sounds.
The “recycling triangle”, the three arrows surrounding a number (1-6 generally) doesn’t actually have anything to do with recycling. The recycling arrows are, essentially, public domain, unregulated, and the plastics industry have adopted it as their own, using the arrows, the triangle and the number to, in a sense, mislead people into thinking that their products are much more environmentally considerate than they really are. The reality is, pretty much only PET 1 and 2 are actually recycled. Even in Toronto, where they accept everything, it’s all basically sorted at the plant and the bulk of it winds up in landfills anyway.