There’s a lot happening in the music world, and we here at Heavy Blog try our very best to keep up with it! Like the vast majority of heavy music fans, our tastes are incredibly vast, with our 3X3s in each Playlist Update typically covering numerous genres and sometimes a…
It would seem that, when it comes to discussing it as a music genre, a lot of different people have just as many if not even more varying criteria as to what exactly constitutes synthwave. For some it’s all about retaining that sound from the 1980’s, while to others it’s all about the synths be they hardware or software, but at the heart of it all is one simple fact: it’s inherently electronic in origin. That said, synthwave tends to not only at times sound like other electronic music genres but melds well with them too at other times as a result. Perhaps there’s been no better example of this than the ways in which chiptunes have influenced synthwave, and vice versa, although to really crank them up it never hurts to add a little metal into the mix. This trinity of sound has therefore produced what has become known as electro death and one of its emerging torchbearers is Big Lich.
As I wrote in my review of LA post/math-rock enclave Arms of Tripoli’s recent sophomore album Daughters, I have a particular soft spot for the band not only because they clearly pull influence from so many instrumental and progressive bands that I already love, but also because they were the first band I came to know and love specifically through writing for Heavy Blog back in 2014 for their debut full-length Dream In Tongues. In my mind the band are just about everything that is good about instrumental post-rock without any of the bloat, mediocrity, and tediousness that plagues so much of the genre and its heavier cousins in post-metal. I’ve been following them closely since and eagerly awaited their next release. So when Arms’ bassist Mike Bouvet reached out to me personally about the upcoming release of Daughters, I knew that I wanted to talk to them about a whole bunch of things. Over a few e-mails we discussed their formation, their collaboration and improv-focused writing process, what sets them apart from most post-rock bands out there, and, of course, eggs.
Calling the past back into the present is a tricky endeavor. In music, it can often lead to the opposite of what a band intended, leaving their music derivative rather than innovative. However, for those bands who manage to skillfully reach back to bring some part of what made past…
