SONG OF THE DAY (#227)

'out from under stars,' by vitesse

it doesn't get much cooler than the story of vitesse. hewson chen and joshua klein collaborated on a piece of music for their 'intro to music composition' class as the university of chicago. after forming their band, they took a page from the led zeppelin school of recording and recorded their debut in a dazzling 36 hours.

they released their most recent album, 'you win again, gravity!' [from which this song comes from] back in 2002, but with hewson's commitments to alsace lorraine, who knows if and when we'll get some more vitesse. i, for one, have all eight fingers and both thumbs crossed [it's a nasty visual, so don't think about it] that we do.

fair or unfair, it's hard not to mention the magnetic fieldswhen speaking or writing about vitesse. as soon as joshua klein opens his mouth he sounds like a slightly more upbeat stephin merritt [it's kind of like listening to paul banks and saying, 'hey, he sounds like ian curtis'] and the majority of the songs on 'you win again' straddle the between holiday-era magnetic fields and architecture & morality-era o.m.d. it's the classic lo-fi, synthpop d.i.y. aesthetic. and it's awesome! it's not hard to imagine a room full of rolands and moogs and about eight miles of cables and extension chords. now that's an awesome visual. think about that one for awhile.

the beauty of the album is that despite the blatantly retro sound, it doesn't sound fixed in any one particular time or place. synthpop's been called many things [most of them disparaging], but with endearing lyrics like, 'when you speak the constellations swirl' and undeniably melodic tunes, this is probably the first time it can be called transcendent.

��� vitesse: out under stars
��� vitesse: of all the things that you've done wrong
��� vitesse: just for a night
��� the magnetic fields: strange powers [from holiday]