PREMIERE | Chime School, self-titled
Having a moment with the prolific Andy Pastalaniec of Chime School; press photo courtesy of the artist/Slumberland.
The ring and corresponding resonance of bells connect with us in a variety of ways. Depending on the shape, weight, magnitude, dimension, scale, and momentum of the striking clapper — a certain ripple of fashioned sound is transmitted for all to witness. The characteristics of tone, volume, timbre, notes, key and cadences are all predicated on the respective swaying instrument. Stationed in the wooded towers and spires of quaint township chapels, or metals cells in a bell box connected to electric door buzzers, musical device mechanicals and limitless others examples convey everything from alerts, indicative time keeping announcements, musical proclamations and so forth. With each mind awakening bronze alloy struck hum, we are brought to a strong sense of attention. These chimes bring us a message, the time of a day, a familiar reverberation that delivers a sound forged by the refiner’s flame that echoes the melodic pop paradigms of the now that are bookended by both the past and the future. The bell serves as the original speaker, the principle building block materials for transistors, monitors, PAs and other such klaxons to relay star bursts of an audio aura in the present that collapses the linear timeline of anachronistic associations. These skillfully forged world waking devices convey timeless assemblages of chiming tintinnabulation that channels today’s sounds through instrumental devices that are eternal.
Emulating and upcycling these seemingly antiquated arts of golden jangle pop are the Bay Area’s Chime School, presenting the debut of their anticipated self-titled album courtesy of Slumberland Records. San Francisco artist Andy Pastalaniec known for work in the groups Cruel Summer, Seablite, Pink Films / Odd Hope and more delivers the latest joyful sounds to arrive in the canon that recognizes McGuinn, Hillman, Clark, Crosby and fellow apostles of the infinite church of modern pop lore. Pastalaniec rips pages from their subsequent successors to the power pop thrones by recreating the feeling, the energy and arrangement of your favorite underground idols. Resurrecting the pure at heart who penned a plethora of sincere DIY ballads that span from the post-punk 70s, 80s, 90s to today; Chime School rings the bells that remind us of our familiar favorite and even perhaps forgotten heroes that provided the soundtrack to our present, past and our great tomorrow.
The Chime School self-titled begins with the unmistaken brightness and beauty of "Wait Your Turn" that could have been a lost mid-80s indie classic. Reminiscent of an underground 80s college cult hit turn festival headliner, "Taking Time Time to Tell You" blares like the missing link between "Velocity Girl" and "Elephant Stone" while "Dead Saturdays" rocks with an energy that would have fit nicely on a bill with the Soup Dragons and BMX Bandits. A romantic spirit is found throughout the record like the road-running wistfulness of "Fixing Motorcycles" that dovetails into the revved up motor of "Anywhere But Here" that sets the coordinates for destinations unknown and new. "Radical Leisure" fires forth a sense of luxury and longing that lives vicariously through the worlds of the posh and well to do, before bringing everything back to the motorbike motif that trades in car fetishization for limitless open road thrills of life on two world wandering wheels with the enthuisastic "Get a Bike".
"Gone Too Fast" ponders the temporal nature of the finite and brevity of the mortal timeline continuum like late night lyrical thoughts that toss and turn whilst digesting the larger questions of existence. The penultimate "It's True" rings like a peppy love song that rocks with an enlightened and warm hearted exuberance that clocks in at under two minutes and makes it feel like everything in the world just might turn out all right after all. The Chime School self-titled closes with "Calling in Sick" that exalts the importance of taking a moment of pause with a sense of carefree glee that defers the demands of the day for another Monday to deal and contend with all the gratuitous headaches that can probably wait at least another business day or two. The Chime School self-titled rings the bells of eras that resonate back to the halcyon 60s, boomeranging back to our current day with a message of blissful jubilation that makes the conundrums, calamities and complexities of today feel a bit more simple in a surrender to a sentiment of happiness that can only be relayed in the harmonics that illuminate the mind, spirit and heart.
Reflections with Chime School’s Andy Pastalaniec; press photo courtesy of the artist/Slumberland.
Andy Pastalaniec of Chime School provided the following exclusive and privy notes on the making of the self-titled album:
I first got into pop music through soul and oldies. I learned drums playing along to soul records. That’s where my sense of melody comes from as well. But that’s not the kind of music I could make. I was obsessed with the 60s jangle and the super arranged and composed English and French pop as well. It took discovering the 80s-does-the-60s indiepop stuff to turn me onto the idea that I could create something myself that drew from those influences. Figuring out how to do it was another matter.
Ironically, the only thing I remember from reading Walter Benjamin is something I misread or misremember, about artifice. A photograph isn’t a picture of something real, it’s a fake; the lens and developer has already rendered the subject into something the eye can’t actually see. Benjamin was on about how reproduction devalues the aura, of the original, but I read it as a benefit; a rule even, for making interesting art. Whether it’s music, photography, film, writing, whatever, you wanna devalue the shit out of that aura, because in doing so, you’re creating something that doesn’t actually exist. In photography, it means using some kind of abstraction to capture something about the subject you can’t see with your eyes. In music, it’s arranging and producing instruments to create a sound that doesn’t exist in real life. If art is concept plus gesture, the degree and subtlety of artifice is maybe the most important part of the gesture.
I don’t claim to have made much interesting art, but the idea of artifice is one of the guiding principles for any art I’ve made. Whether it’s layering five guitars to create the illusion of one huge guitar, using varying qualities of fidelity as a songwriting tool, arranging sampled drums as if a live drummer were playing them, using Super 8 film instead of an iPhone, or when I do have to use an iPhone, awkwardly holding my sunglasses to the camera lens to create a filter or lens flare. All tricks and effects to color the content. Or maybe it’s just an excuse to overindulge on all of these gestures! Maybe I did, maybe not. Either way, Chime School is out now, and the world can be the judge!
Chime School’s self-titled will be available November 5 via Slumberland.
