John Vanderslice is an ever-reliable indie rock lifer. He's made a whole lot of records under his own name, and he's also worked on some truly great music from some of this century's definitive artists. In recent years, the Sliceman has been delving deeper into electronic sounds, and last year he got together with the San Francisco producer and multi-instrumentalist James Riotto to form Google Earth, a new project with an extremely SEO-unfriendly name. One year after dropping their debut album Street View, Google Earth are ready to announce another one. It's called Mac OS X 10.11, and you simply must admire their commitment to the bit.
Most of the tracks on Mac OS X 10.11 aren't full-on songs; they're mood-pieces. That's definitely the case with opening track "meow meow," on which John Vanderslice repeats the phrase "I can't help you forget anything" like a mantra. His voice, tender and vulnerable, echoes over a landscape of contemplative beeps, off-kilter drums, and plangent saxophones and pianos -- an electronic/jazz hybrid that's leagues away from the Vanderslice sound that many of us remember.
In a press release, Vanderslice has this to say:
I think Jamie and I are better now at the typical Google Earth process of starting with nothing and ending with something but who knows how that translates in the end. GE seems to be good at confounding us, I still find the journey to be difficult and unsettling. It's easier when you're just writing a song with a verse/chorus.
James Riotto continues:
We didn't set out to make a record when we were recording Street View, but it became a sort of proof of concept for us. We didn't even really change much for this one; we just kept working the way we had been, refining our weird process more or less uninterrupted from the first record. I think it was really important to John and me that we make as much music as possible before he moved to Europe. Fifteen years into our friendship, we'd stumbled on a new and exciting way of working together, and we really wanted to make the most of it before this particular process was rendered obsolete by distance.
Below, check out "meow meow" and the Mac OS X 10.11 tracklist.
TRACKLIST:
01 "kill screen"
02 "meow meow"
03 "endless corridor"
04 "i can’t believe happiness"
05 "text and drive"
06 "proceed to the route"
07 "C3"
08 "home computer"
09 "the source"
Mac OS X 10.11 is out 8/29 on Tiny Telephone. I love that it's got a song called "proceed to the route."
