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UR CHICAGO NAMES "SUBTLE INVISIBLE BODIES" RECORD OF THE MONTH
03/14/2002

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UR Chicago
March 14 - April 11 edition


RECORD OF THE MONTH - LOCAL
TINY HAIRS - SUBTLE INVISIBLE BODIES (CD False Walls)

"I was living in San Francisco and one day I found a big, box TV set on wheels. So of course I rode it down a hill," waxes Chuck King, the electronics/turntable/short-wave radio/bric-a-brac engineer for Chicago's experimental sextet Tiny Hairs. And after listening to the Tiny Hairs' debut full length Subtle Invisible Bodies, that makes perfect sense. From the guitar/violin intricacy and glacial groove of "Square Sail Growing From the Branch of a Tree" to the Mexican accordion transmissions of "Berm", Tiny Hairs' minimalism is the sound of saddling static and riding it down the aural landscape in slo-motion. All at once their subtle melodies and open-ended drone will put you in a trance, only to be zapped out by random bursts of short-wave and punctuated by samples of what sound like grammar lessons. Too many improvisational instrumental artists either come off as too pretentiously brain-jarring or too overtly calculated, but Tiny Hairs' experimental compositions are spontaneously graceful as they build quiet anticipation without alienating listeners.

 

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