If music is an automatic process, then Brooklyn-based duo Home Video have a remarkable knack for aesthetics and atmosphere -- two essential characteristics that never fail to draw me to a record. When first handling any new album, I tend to appreciate general design, photography, and quality of the packaging first. Slipping the disc into the player, more than lyrics, I'm sensitive to the atmosphere of a recording first and foremost. These are elusive qualities for most artists, certainly not an automatic process, but Home Video seem to have a firm grasp on what they're trying to express.
The two principles in the band, David Gross and Collin Ruffino, have known each other since sharing a New Orleans high school art class, which seems a logical starting point for a band with their aesthetics. The new album’s cover, featuring still photographs of David and Collin submerged in water fully clothed, opposite gatefold panels of hypnotic spirals, suggests that by exploring this record further you too will be submerged in a hypnotic state. Indeed, the music keeps that promise with its layered intensity and ethereal vocals, at times making strides into territory charted by the likes of Radiohead and Massive Attack without losing their own identity along the way.
-- Jason Bentley, KCRW Music Director and host of Morning Becomes Eclectic
Automatic Process will be available to stream On-Demand here on KCRW.com from November 15 through December 14, 2010. The album will be released on November, 23, 2010.
Artist website: http://www.homevideo.fm/
Track listing
1. Accomplished But Dead
2. The Smoke
3. Business Transaction
4. An Accident
5. I Can Make You Feel It
6. Beatrice
7. The Automatic Process
8. Every Love That Ever Was
9. Description of a Struggle
10. No Relief
11. You Will Know What to Do