A simple Planar
- Planar - Goodbye Atmosphere, Goodbye Traffic
- MacGyver they're not, but new-age trio crafts impressive debut from little more than some keys and percussion.
- Check out Planar's Website
Making decent music can be easy. Just ask the band Planar.
Employing only a drum machine and a couple of synthesizers for their debut LP album back in 2002, Goodbye Atmosphere, Goodbye Traffic is not only a significant accomplishment given the limited resources, it’s also a pretty good record.
A collection of ethereally dreamy new-age tunes dominated by wavelengths of mood-enhancing synthesizers and samples, Goodbye Atmosphere, Goodbye Traffic relies more on the sum of its technical parts than the actual talents of individual musicians. But it works.
Evoking at times a sense of gloom and despair, this is one of those records that has a tendency to stay with you long after you’ve listened to it. “Square Root” and “Natural Log,” by far the album’s two best tunes thanks to the haunting female vocal and more stylized production than the rest, are as close to mainstream as the band gets. And if you’re strictly a rock and roll traditionalist, these songs are probably nothing like you’ve ever heard before.
Along with the seductive vocal on “Natural Log,” the keyboards – slow and mesmerizing at first – gently pull you in toward the lyrical center before dissipating, then burst back onto the scene later demanding full recognition. Though guitars are not part of Planar’s repertoire on their debut, there’s clearly a riff or two toward the end of “Natural Log” to help bring it home, a tribute to the record’s overall production value.
“Greater Than,” another strong effort, is surrounded by a jumpy drum beat that envelops a foreboding, yet catchy melody. Guitars – or, at least, what sounds like them – also surface here, but not in the same riff-oriented way they do on “Natural Log.” More jangly and R.E.M.-esque, Planar, though difficult to peg as a band, gives way to subtle mainstream influences.
What Planar doesn’t do well, however, is convince us that their debut material merits long-playing status. Goodbye Atmosphere, Goodbye Traffic’s four worthiest tunes – including the ambitious 15-minute “X,Y” that closes out the record – are seemingly fused together by four short, sample-rich songs that come across more mechanical noise than music. Appropriately named “Alpha,” “Beta,” “Gamma” and “Delta,” the tunes are interspersed accordingly between the other numbers, lending themselves more filler than anything. The clever samplings of distant voices and planes of everyday reality, a borrowed technique screaming Pink Floyd’s The Wall, can’t save them from the realm of the forgettable and wind up lingering a bit too long despite their brevity.
Stretched well beyond its limits, the material comprising Planar’s debut cannot dutifully hold together the 40 or so minutes that make up the album, the result of which is frequent boredom. At times it seems better suited as the score of a theatrical release rather than a work of new-age art.
For what it is, this album is a relatively strong debut for a band that exhibits virtually no skills on an individual level. Besides the female vocal drifting in and out of it, Goodbye Atmosphere, Goodbye Traffic’s strongest point is its production. By adroitly weaving a plethora of simple notes over an ocean of synthetic vapor, the mixers of this record deserve the bulk of the credit for any recognition garnered. How much the actual band – Aaron and Amber Blankenship, along with Billy Bennett – had to do with the final product is unknown.
But with a full-length follow-up in the works that promises to showcase the band’s more guitar-driven sensibilities, I’m anxious to find out.
