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***Nudge is the Northwest indietronica supergroup headed by Outward Music Company label head Brian Foote and featuring musicians who've played in Fontanelle, Jackie-o-Motherfucker, Emergency, Nice Nice, Jessamine, Strategy and Sunn. For the past five years Nudge has attracted an estranged ark full of talented musicians for marathon improvisations and edits that result in perfectly glitched future musics. Alongside core members Honey Owens and Paul Dickow, Foote battles the source-fragments' natural entropy by coercing them into a near-seamless collage. At its best, the fusion is both ear-pleasing and inebriating. Points of reference become irrelevant as layer upon layer of influence smudge into a unique flavor of rave-damaged art pop. From the thump-and-bounce jank of disassembled funk jumbles like "Poor Impulse Control" to the half-calm lilt of "Blue Screen" (a torch song about system failure), an energetic anxiety floats Elaborate Devices For Filtering Crisis. Nudge seems almost in harmony with their technology, but at odds with themselves. Much of Elaborate Devices For Filtering Crisis takes the live-meets-programmed promises of their debut Trick Doubt one step further by introducing human vocals, alternate controllers and cross-patched instrumentation. That Nudge can explore experimental working methods (those who have seen the band live can attest to their tangled MIDI rigs and appalling amounts of gear more fitting of a rock band), while still evoking simultaneous moods of mischief, sadness, frustration, surprise, and ecstasy is astonishing enough; that they can do so while retaining a commitment to performing live what would ordinarily be sequenced is more impressive still. Nudge makes their complex, multi-layered, tech-soul songs sound almost embarrassingly organic. |
