Review by Jake Gillen
My house is definitely a house divided, at least when it comes to the age-old, fundamental question: TV or Music? My wife definitely likes to have the TV on, although it seems like she has it more for noise than for actually sitting and watching with any sort of real attention. I write this because a while back, I decided that we were going to listen to music where we would normally have the TV on. I ended up putting on Arms of Tripoli's EP from the back end of 2012, "All the Fallen Embers".
To clarify, the wife is about 50/50 when it comes to my music: She tolerates half, and hates the other half!
Arms of Tripoli, I am happy to share, is in the tolerated half.
I have to make a confession though: I had a really hard time sitting and listening without doing something else (reading, etc). Now, I am not 'That Guy', Mister Master Multi-Tasker, Smartphone always at hand. I am, in fact, quite the single-tasker. Then I had a striking realization: I have been listening to Arms of Tripoli at work and have actually trained myself using this EP to focus and be productive when it's playing.
Since my first listen to "All the Fallen Embers", it has become my go-to working music. At 6 tracks and 29 minutes, it's a really quick and easy listen, and as I was explaining, is really easy to listen to while engaging in tasks that require my full (or most of my) attention and brain power. There's nothing that I could call musically groundbreaking here, as is the case with most of the really solid, enjoyable music I am drawn to; "Embers" is tight, melodic without being twee or boring, and is Math-y enough, with texture and character, that I can listen without being distracted or annoyed by it.
Track 1, 'Vikings in the Attic', is repetitive at times (as pointed out by my wife), but has some build-up and time changes to add drama, and I really dig the sort of muted splash of the cymbals. Lurking just under the surface, you can tell that these musicians could probably shred us up with their chops if they wanted, but that's not the character here. They seem to be more about setting moods with atmosphere than trying to prove anything.
Track 2 is considerably more downbeat, a little melancholy even. Entitled 'City Speak', it's got a series of tight guitar strum notes, which remind me of parts in some of Dredg's earlier tunes, that I just love. For whatever reason, this tune evokes a little bit of the feeling of regret and maybe loss, and if you have ever read any of my reviews, you will know that I am a total sucker for grayish tunes like this one.
'Sectioned by Brooks' is slightly grittier in the faster parts, with a little fuzz on guitar; the slide-guitar sounding parts remind me ever so slightly of Keith Richards back in the olden days, and for whatever reason make me think of one of those marker buoys that you might hear, bell ringing through a fog. I wonder if Brooks are bodies of water or a person?
Next, 'Waking Eyes' is the longest track at just about 6 minutes, and showcases the guitar most prominently. Following that is 'Cliff Dwellings', which has some pretty deep layering - you can most easily hear the sort of jangling lead, but there is a lot going on between the deeper-throated guitar bridges. Last but not least, 'Radio Silence' brings it home with the quickest tempo, complete with jazzy snare rolls.
Arms of Tripoli, of Los Angeles, California, is something of an instrumental post-rock supergroup, with members coming from a number of other instrumental bands, and these folks are the real deal.
I mean, this is really good music, and I am sure that a wider audience would appreciate it, but realistically, it doesn't usually reach them. That means that these musicians do it for the love of making music, and to me, there is no beating that.
