SEPTEMBER 2008 ONLINE EDITORIALS

Castles - New West America

By Nathan Harper

After three years of recording as Castles, local artist Matthew Sage, the one-man creative force behind the name, is moving on to other projects, but not before releasing New West America, an enjoyable, challenging two-disc testament to his time spent in the Castles’ state of mind.

The first disc effectively combines the varied arrangements and love of dissonance that fuels Broken Social Scene with Pavement’s laconic, distortion-heavy early work to produce a loose, expansive sound that is simultaneously warm and slightly abrasive. Sage recorded the music entirely himself, and though it was that exhaustive process that ultimately spurred him elsewhere, the care and concern for the sounds heard on New West America speak to many late hours with mixer and sampler, a studio alchemist synthesizing electric and acoustic elements to put out music that is experimental without sacrificing catchiness.

Reverberated vocals are layered over each other and the drums are placed high in the mix while the dense musical arrangements occupy the middle to low end, the final effect being one of movement both across the speakers and back and forth through the room. There’s a tension in both music and vocals, but they never seem hurried. It’s that same relaxed feeling that is taken into the second disc, a collection of ambient instrumentals that lack the unifying percussion of the first disc, instead spreading out slow like spilt molasses. Sage has supplanted Castles with no less than three upcoming projects, all released through his Fir Trader’s Union label.