Last month, I wrote about the All-Star, no-wave, noise-punk act Ice Balloons, an act comprised of a who’s who of contemporary indie rock as the band’s lineup features TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone, Samiam’s Sean Kennerly, Fuckemos’ and Surfbort’s Sean Powell, Midnight Masses’ Giselle Reiber, Wild Yaks’ Dan Scinta and B.A. Miele. And while the band may be a side project from each member’s full-time gig, the project finds each member bringing disparate elements from their primary gigs and their pasts into the side project’s creative process; in fact, as you would have heard on “Calypso Heartworm,” the latest single off the band’s forthcoming full-length debut Fiesta, the band specializes in a fuzzy and washed out dissonance paired with a difficult to discern song structure. There are hints at familiar elements — there’s something like a bridge and there’s even something like a hook and even verses — and it’s held together by a propulsive and angular bass line, buzzing guitar chords and washed out sounds. With a trippy and kaleidoscopic vibe underneath the cacophony of noise, “Calypso Heartworm” manages to feel anxious yet slack and chaotic.
“The Wasp,” the latest single off the band’s forthcoming album, Fiesta was inspired by insects, after a hallucination caused by attitude sickness during a trip to Colorado, and the single features scorching guitar work, sizzling blasts of electronics and distorted, howling vocals to create a song that sounds like a blistering punk anthem from a broken and failing spaceship sent from a dystopian planet, much like our own.
