Washed Out and Toro Y Moi, New York’s Small Black is destined to make landfall on your ears sometime soon, like the pieces of the ROSAT satellite that came back into the Earth’s atmosphere a couple of nights ago.
Last year, Small Black released a criminally overlooked but really solid debut album called “New Chain” on Jagjaguar that may have flown under your radar, but is well worth your tracking down and spending some time with.
Now taking a cue from the hip-hop world, in a few weeks time, Small Black is set to release a “mixtape” that features some new work, and will no doubt whet new Small Black fans’ appetite for the full length set to come out in 2012.
The first teaser is a sparkling, spacey diamond called, “Moon Killer“. With a thick bass-y low-end, strong synth washes, and endlessly glimmering flourishes, the track is a tiny epic. Downloadable, for free, like so many tumblr jpegs of Hubble telescope images, it’s easy to discount the emotive will it takes to not only write a song but give it an atmosphere to exist in. The sheer scope of the thing is infinitely more complex and moving than the data and begs to be puzzled over. Spend some time with it, explore the sounds…feel the stars.