Flightless Birds Take Wing Craft a Deep Ambient Track of Minimalist Complexity on “Latrobe”

Flightless Birds Take Wing, photo courtesy the artists

Flightless Birds Take Wing bring together distorted, warping drones that course through the soundscape, a pulsing, abstracted bell tone and the sound of a device that makes noises like something has gone wrong with its internal workings and the satisfying hums and automatic rhythms go off course. This is “Latrobe,” the first track off of the project’s debut EP Taking Flight. The song eventually progresses to a place of more vivid musical coherence but still an assemblage of sounds intersecting from independent sources to create a sense of place both physical and psychological. In the last section of the track a more formal melody forms and has such an unconventional tonal structure it takes you out of a conventional music absorption mode as it moves from major to minor key while the more textural sounds hover around and move off. It’s a fascinating piece of work that establishes atmospherics in a way that utilizes the suggestion of a tactile element to the music rather than one purely auditory for a hybrid aesthetic that lends its minimalism a dynamic complexity like the analog of the collection of processes that make up a living being. Listen to “Latrobe” on Spotify where you can further explore Taking Flight and connect with the Australian experimental duo Flightless Birds Take Wing at the links below.