A Beacon School – Queen City Sounds and Art

A Beacon School, photo courtesy the artist

A Beacon School unfurls a swirling, kaleidoscopic melody to wash around the introspection expressed in “KITM” (which means keep it to myself). This finds entrancing form in the music video by Alex Beebe and Chase Wagner with illustrative colors, geometric shapes and spectral overlays and following some seemingly educational film footage about a variety of red flowers that grow on trees and bushes. But the colors are all otherworldly with the blues overwhelming the greens and the rose tones enhanced. We see an image of a boat coming into harbor in the night and hands placing tiles as colors switch and flash. It’s all very surreal yet oddly reassuring. The song is like if Animal Collective collaborated with Washed Out to make a tonally rich yet hushed shoegaze track. It teems with energy yet doesn’t overwhelm and because of that it invites an immediate re-listen. For a song that seems to urge you to stop procrastinating and take that next crucial step into a rewarding life it coaxes more than cajoles and that makes all the difference. The new A Beacon School album yoyo released on October 13, 2023. Watch the video for “KITM” on YouTube and follow A Beacon School at the links below.

A Beacon School on Facebook

A Beacon School on Twitter

A Beacon School on Bandcamp

A Beacon School on Instagram

“Dot” is A Beacon School’s first release in three years and its free flowing swirl of colorful tones promise some deeply imaginative soundscaping in the forthcoming album due out sometime in the hopefully non-too distant future. Its gentle psychedelia and expansive dynamic is an interesting choice for a song that blends a contemplation on creating a work of art and a reflection on one’s own life. The way one creates say a visual work or a song from conceptualization stage to execution in sketches and stages, parts and passages and going through life considering what paths to take, small choices that establish an overall pattern that you hope you can consciously guide or set in motion in ways that unfold to one’s satisfaction. In both cases imagining you’ve discovered a new method, a new aesthetic, a dramatic breakthrough in one’s creative work and life only to discover patterns that emerge from the character you’ve made for yourself. And yet in that realization is the consciousness of ways to work with instincts and habits and break or transform them in ways that seem viable and sustainable. And ideally through multiple iterations of these attempts we can establish more rewarding patterns in art and in life. Musically the layers of synth and flow of textures is reminiscent of the dream pop of Sound of Ceres and the main melodic line in the song strongly resonates with that of Stereolab’s “Blue Milk” so that an unconventional free jazz element provides an informal structure to the way the song organically resolves in a way that keeps your attention to the end. Listen to “Dot” on YouTube and follow A Beacon School at the links provided.