Weird Era Cont., the “bonus” disc to Deerhunter’s new Microcastle LP, is a disc that begs for late-night headphone sessions. Reversed sounds swish between speakers around Bradford Cox’s garbled, reverb-soaked vocals. Heavily processed found-sound percussion emerges from and disintegrates into static noises. Dissonant notes of bent guitar distortion intertwine over ghostly and repetitive keyboard sounds. Most of the layered textures come across as dark, hypnotic pieces that bring to mind the inner ramblings of one’s subconscious.
The whole album has a dreamy collage feel to it, both in terms of numerous and fragmented musical “interludes” and with respect to the sonic qualities of the instrument combinations. The rhythms opening “Dot Gain,” for example, sound as if they’re comprised of miscellaneous beats sampled from different drum sets and odds and ends sloppily thrown together to create a wonderfully loose but grooving feel. “Vox Celeste” floods the speakers with distortion and sedate, incoherent vocals that together channel My Bloody Valentine (to great effect). “Cicadas” is a mesmerizing interlude of fluttering cymbals and delicate swells of synths and ambient sounds. “Vox Humana” is an otherworldly spoken word piece that seemingly filters the sounds of late '50s pop and surf music through the lens of a David Lynch film.
Weird Era Cont. works both as a standalone disc and as an extension of Microcastle. Together, the two discs show the breadth of Deerhunter’s range. Where Microcastle peeled away the special effects to expose hypnotic and emotional (or emotionally vacant) pop songs, Weird Era focuses less on conventional songwriting and more on sonic collages and textural experiments. The result is an intriguing album that both holds your attention and pushes your mind to wander aimlessly. Nowhere is this better experienced than in the closing minutes of the final track. Wall-of-sound guitar distortion clears to a vacant landscape of wind chimes, barely audible voices, and delicate bubbling sounds that seem not like they’re coming from your headphones, but rather from the confines of your own head.
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