Takka Takka "Migration" (Ernest Jenning Record Co.)
It would be easy to lay the "deadly serious indie rock" trip on Takka Takka, if only because bandmember Gabe Levine published this nugget as part of the one-sheet for Migration:
Sometimes this record is about my mother. She recently decided to become a Pamanku, a Balinese holy person. This has brought us do a fair amount of talking lately, more than I have ever had chance to do before. Some of those conversations made their way into these songs-myth, prayer, offerings, gamelan music (oh such sweet music), poverty, volcanic eruptions, Communist purges, cultural misunderstanding, racism, family and abandonment.
I'm not gonna get in the way of a boy and his momz. But I will say this: Despite all of Levine's highly personal, man-of-the-world talk, I do get where Migration is coming from. It's serious in that '80s way (crisp drums, occasional Edge-y guitars, dollops of white funk, crystalline synths) -- and it's serious in that '90s way (we can assume that Takka Takka is well aware of Thrill Jockey's hushy post-rock heroes). But the album isn't deadly or deadening; it's music to be "lived with," patiently. I've managed to give it a couple of weeks of semiregular-but-casual consumption, but I'm still not feeling an overwhelming urge to pick it apart further. So, y'know, maybe Migration is affecting me the way Levine wants it to, as an East/West, subconscious/conscious thing. Or maybe I'm just giving Takka Takka the benefit of the doubt. All of this seriousness can be so confusing.
Side note: Sean Greenhalgh of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah produced it; other really serious Brooklyn dudes have cameos.
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