Michael Columbia: Stay Hard
Alabaster/Galapagos4

Is Stay Hard vocal pop? Electronica? Experimental rock? Ambient drone? Sun Ra psychedelia? All of the above and then some, going by Michael Columbia's six-song EP. As colourful as its cover art suggests, David McDonnell and Dylan Ryan's follow-up to 2004's These Are Colored Bars is hybrid spawn with a penchant for unpredictable left turns. The multi-layered romp “Dog Dog Camel” establishes the spacey template right off, with a rising-falling vocal line grounding a rollicking mass of roller-rink organ melodies, plinking pianos, tumbling drums, and horn accents. The duo hauls out the alto sax once more during the cosmic lounge jazz of “Predator” while allowing enough room for a robotic vocal chorus or two to appear. Interestingly, Michael Columbia spotlights instrumentals more than vocal cuts: ruminative piano chords alternate with repeating Glass-styled woodwinds in the brooding “T.E. Lawrence,” “Call Off Your Buffalo” shakes ambient, drone, and funk into a lumbering sax-driven cocktail, and motorik pulses anchor wiry jungle fusion in “Bengal Tiger.”

June 2006