Animal - Diatoms

Based out of Fairfield, Iowa, Animal has arrived on the scene with their debut release titled Diatoms. The duo have created an electronic leaning effort that pulls no punches and is a wondrous, experimental effort that throws the musical rulebook out the window and focuses on just playing the music that they want to their listening audience.

The disc opens up with "Burning Leaves", starting off with a gritty acoustic guitar arrangement before the vocals kick in, which are brought forth to us by Darla Murphy, whose warm, ethereal vocal presence immediately makes us feel at ease and starts off the album on a strong note. "Milky" is a purely experimental track with light xylophone arrangements that appear faintly reminiscent of windchimes and give off a bold, deep sound that reflects the album's overall goal that is still laying ahead. Philip Rabalais does a strong effort of ensuring the group's sound is well represented and sounds the way that they envisioned when this album was on the drawing board. "Biggest One" features a bevy of distortion that masks the vocals and gives the song a warped, disjointed feel that takes some time to get used to upon first listen. "Fall Around" is a toned down, moody track that is not like the others that came before it, and offers up a departure from the other non-traditional tracks that came before it and segues way consistently into the second half of the disc.

We start off the second half with my favorite track off the effort, "Beat01" an interweaving, downtempo number that best represents Darla's beautiful and captivating vocal presence and melds in together beautifully with the ever changing soundscapes that permeate the entire track. The disc starts to draw to a close on "January", a moody, atmospheric track that brings together some eerie and drab sounds that jump out and scare you ever so suddenly as you're listening to it, making this track one of the more strange yet satisfying tracks featured here on the disc. "People or Plant" ultimately closes out the disc with a terrific acoustic guitar arrangement, very similar to the one featured on the first track and takes those elements and transcribes them for us in easy to understand musical apertures and wavelengths that give us a sense of the musical makeup of each of these tracks and the chemistry between all of the tracks and how they interact with one another. Experimental/ambient music is one of those genres where rules need not apply to musicians, and the artists sort of adopt a philosophy where everything goes, even if it doesn't make sense musically or doesn't even belong there, the musicians just go ahead and do it, there's no reason not to go ahead and try to make some music out of what they have gathered together. Animal is one of those bands adopting this philosophy and putting it to good use here.

In retrospect, a well executed effort here from Animal, who have given us a well executed effort that shows what happens when two musicians gather together in a room and throw together everything they've learned musically and throw it all in one big, musical pot and wait and see what comes out of it.

                                                                                                                            Album Score: 3.5/5

Track Listing:

1. Burning Leaves
2. Milky
3. Biggest One
4. Fall Around
5. Beat01
6. January
7. People or Plant

To check out "Diatoms" for yourself, head on over to the group's BandCamp Site at animalmusic.bandcamp.com to listen to the disc in it's entirety. For more information on the duo, head on over to the group's Facebook page at: www.facebook.com/animalsound