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EXCLUSIVE PREMIERE: A-tota-so Prepare For Lights Out with “I am”

I first ran into A-tota-so via our good friends over at Fecking Bahamas. Their sort of gentle yet emotive blend of post-rock and math-rock is something that I hold dear

2 years ago

I first ran into A-tota-so via our good friends over at Fecking Bahamas. Their sort of gentle yet emotive blend of post-rock and math-rock is something that I hold dear to my heart. Usually an instrumental band, A-tota-so are known for creating math-rock that is more evocative than technical and “math-y”, which garners them that post-rock prefix to their genre. That blend is what reached me when I first heard them, cutting me to my core. So when I heard that the band are gearing up to release an album with lots of great guest vocalists (Damien Sayell from Mclusky and Ashley Tubb from Sugar Horse to name just two), I was very excited. And, upon listening to the first single from the album, “I am”, I was not disappointed. Featuring Aisling Whiting from Sang Froid (a great band in and of itself), “I am” is an incredibly fragile and moving track, until it decides to burst forth from its shell in a magnificent crescendo. And it comes accompanied with an excellently animated video, so scroll on down below to check it out!

I think it’s safe to say that Whiting’s vocals are the center of this track, down-right bewitching in the ease with which they weave in and out of the delicate guitar melodies that make up the majority of the track. When it is time for those guitars to rise in crescendo, around the two minutes mark, Whiting voice unsheathes a hidden potency it might have been hard to assign it if you hadn’t heard her range in the past. Here, it works extremely well with the catharsis of the track, lending its energies to the blow up and then the dying off of the instruments. The end result is a very moving track, which leaves you contemplative and somber as strings accompany Whiting’s way towards the final return of the guitars and the resolution of the musical theme of the track.

Lights Out, from which this track is taken, releases on March 11th of next year. You can head on over to the band’s Bandcamp page to pre-order it and stay tuned when more music from it releases.

Eden Kupermintz

Published 2 years ago