Tag: The Bodies Obtained

The Bodies Obtained’s Beautifully Nightmarish “You’ll Always Be, What’s Her Name” is a Cyberpunk Flavored Collage of Trip Hop and EBM

The nighmarish tonal drifts, warping and bends in “You’ll Always Be, What’s Her Name” by The Bodies Obtained from the beginning sets a darkly surreal mood. Especially the cutting, swelling flares of synth, clearly distorted to give it a discordant quality that tears into the downtempo mood established by the rhythm. But even that rhythm fractures and stumbles and reasserts itself and flows with the sounds seemingly dropped into the track like samples without an anchoring context like the melodiously wordless vocals. Like a trip hop song comprised of freely associated sampling, like a DJ Shadow song with a cyberpunk aesthetic. No actual human now could know but it’s like the band has created the experience of jacking into a neural network right out of a William Gibson novel but instead of a smooth experience you got into a feed with a crumbling and inconsistent connection and being routed in not random but intermittent bits of information. And yet in the end it all works out for a chill track that is simultaneously fascinatingly and beautifully unsettling. Which could be said of all the songs from the new The Bodies Obtained album Until I Crawl Away which dropped on November 10, 2023. Listen to “You’ll Always Be, What’s Her Name” on Spotify and follow the duo at the links below.

“Over an Old Road” by The Bodies Obtained is Like Library Music Crafted by Dali’s Melted Clocks Gone Sentient

Sustained, paradoxically gentle bursts of bright cycling melodic tones fused with the sound of bell tones counting time in a drawn out shimmer are the backbone of “Over an Old Road” by The Bodies Obtained. Sure maybe the project takes its name from a line from Joy Division’s “Day of the Lords” but this track sounds like some demented, broken library music sourced mash-up that brings together distorted haze and sharp, metallic sounds like music you might imagine an animated version of Dali’s melted clocks to make if they had somehow attained sentience the way Voyager I did in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It’s strange stuff that wouldn’t be out of place on Warp Records and fans of that label’s more challenging outer edge stuff should give this song a try. Listen to “Over an Old Road” on Spotify and follow The Bodies Obtained on Soundcloud.

The Bodies Obtained Combine Techno, IDM and Post-punk Aesthetics for the Evocatively Intricate “Do Nothing, Be Nothing”

The Bodies Obtained (presumably the name of the project is named after the lyric from the Joy Division song “Day of the Lords”) title its single “Do Nothing, Be Nothing” and invoke expectations of something that might sound like a Discharge song. But no, it’s a wonderful combination of post-punk and IDM-infused techno like a Depeche Mode and Clark mash-up. Its sound brings together textural tones and layers of rhythm like a melodic electronic bass line given a percussive quality so that the driving dynamic of the song seems to vivid with multiple through lines that carry an irresistible aggregate of momentum even as the song diverges from what is initially established as the main musical theme and then consolidates the strands of sonic ideas by the end. We’ve heard elements of this song before in other styles of music but it’s not often we hear a project truly thread together minimal techno, post-punk’s moodiness and IDM’s propulsive atmospheric qualities in such an intricate yet uncomplicated way with strong musical lines that complement each other so effectively. Listen to “Do Nothing, Be Nothing” on Spotify and follow The Bodies Obtained on Soundcloud.