TW-F: The Curtains "Flybys" LP + Download
Side A - 1. Park Work 2. The Burl 3. Computer Finch 4. Bummer with Cakes 5. Time Center 6. Watch for: The Eliminator 7. Fast Talks 8. Blink, Professor 9. Asterisks by Moonlight
Side B - 10. Hatching the New Guy 11. Partners 12. Death Constellation 13. Binotic Ting 14. Moment with Plankton 15. Telegraph Victories 16. Saga 17. Observations 18. Pure Bronze 19. The Shooter 20. Alpine Hunter 21. It's the Bunklords 22. Snowy Visitors
Personnel:
Chris Cohen - Guitar
Andrew Maxwell - Drums and Vocal
Greg Saunier - Synthesizer
"There's a childlike sensibility that pervades the album, but more than make the music sound cutesy or trite, it results in a feeling of freshness
and wide-eyed wonder, a feeling that makes Flybys just plain fun. Whether Cohen uses bright clean channel guitar or dirtier tones,
whether Saunier's keyboard makes the blippy sounds of early video games or fizzling bursts of decaying sound, and whether Maxwell plays in a jumble or in more restrained accents, Flybys is just that, fun.
Add to this to the group's unique take on rock and pop language, and you've got fun music you can think along to, an enjoyable combo indeed."
Adam Strohm, FakeJazz.com
"The Curtains have no modern musical peers that I can think of. When I first heard the record, I checked to see the year that it was released
and even then I wasn't sure if the Curtains had looted the vaults of the Frank Zappa estate. If you want to hear insane video game music without
burning out your eyes and getting carpal tunnel syndrome, this is the record for you. Highly recommended."
Jason Ziemniak, Delusions of Adequacy
"The second full length from The Curtains who share two members with the local favorites Deerhoof, Chris Cohen on guitar and Greg Saunier on Analog Synth. Andrew Maxwell angles off the trio on drums and occasional vocal and the results are perplexingly perfect.
22 tunes spread over a half-hour, The Curtains have a strange ability to make you laugh like a pre-schooler high on snack break Capr-Sun. The Sound of three people backtracking and rewriting their musical vocabulary... There are no real precedents, no real rules, simply explorations, often ear shattering ones that melt into quizzical codas. I only wish there was more of Maxwell's baritone... A word of warning, enveloping yourself in this record may make you smile without fully understanding why and might make you cry ambiguous tears. ..."
Yosef Lewis, The Big Takeover, Issue 53
"Songs like "Bummer With Cakes," a noisily evocative track that sounds like a bull in a china shop, or perhaps more accurately,
an elephant in a bakery, and the lumbering "Saga," which has an appropriately prog rock tinge, have a unique spontaneity
and playfulness that set the band apart from many of its experimental-rock peers. The band's use of analog synths is also distinctive;
songs like "Computer Finch," "Moment With Plankton," "Pure Bronze," and "The Shooter" are still playful but slightly reserved and even menacing sounding, recalling the soundtracks of public television documentaries from the '70s. Picking out highlights on an album that blazes through 22 tracks in just over half an hour is difficult, but the lovely "Partners," which sounds a little like the infamous five-note refrain from Close Encounters of the Third Kind
fleshed out into a full song, is definitely a standout track, along with the bouncy, triumphant "Telegraph Victories" and the bombastic sci-fi
prog of "Alpine Hunter." (...) An abstractly yet clearly expressive album, Flybys is a musical mosaic that ends up being more than the sum
of its many minute parts."
Heather Phares, All Music Guide