Spellling - Spellling & The Mystery School - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

On Chrystia Cabral's fourth album as SPELLLING, the Bay Area artist transformsher acclaimed avant-pop project into a mirror. Cabral's lyrics for Portrait of MyHeart tackle love, intimacy, anxiety, and alienation, trading the allegorical approachof much of her previous work for something pointed into her human heart. Thealbum's thematic forthrightness is echoed in it's arrangements, making it thesharpest, most direct SPELLLING album to date. From the dark minimalism ofher earliest music to the lavishly orchestrated prog-pop of 2021's The TurningWheel to this newly energetic expression of her creative spirit, Cabral has provedagain and again that SPELLLING can be whatever she needs it to be.The title track, with it's propulsive drum groove and anthemic chorus of InchI don'tbelong here,Inch is the most potent embodiment of the album's turn toward emotional directness. Once the main melody emerged, Cabral used the song as a toolto process her anxiety as a performer and opted for a tighter, more rock-orientedcomposition. This transformation mirrors the album's broader shift toward energyand immediacy, driven by the core band of Wyatt Overson (guitar), Patrick Shelley (drums), and Giulio Xavier Cetto (bass), whose collaboration uncovers newcontours of the SPELLLING sound. Cabral still writes and demos in isolation, butpresenting the songs for Portrait of My Heart to her bandmates helped her discovertheir eventual lively, organic forms. So did working with a trio of producers-TheTurning Wheel mixing engineer Drew Vandenberg, SZA collaborator Rob Bisel,and Yves Tumor producer Psymun.Key guest contributions further shape the album. Chaz Bear (Toro y Moi) deliversSPELLLING's first duet on InchMount Analogue,Inch Turnstile guitarist Pat McCroryturns Cabral's original piano demo for InchAlibiInch into the crunchy, riff-y version thatappears on the record, while Zulu's Braxton Mar

Mazy Fly, the second full-length by the Bay Area artist SPELLLING, explores the tension between the thrill of exploring the unknown and the terror of imminent destruction. Chrystia Cabral spent the summer of 2018 in her Berkeley studio reflecting on the thresholds of human progress and longing for a new and better tomorrow. She was struck by the way the same technologies that have given humans the ability to achieve utopian dreams of discovery have also brought the world to the precipice of dystopic global devastation. Despite the darkness of this reality, Mazy Fly is defiantly optimistic. It is a celestial voyage into the unknown, piloted by Cabral. Mazy Fly musically traverses the spaces between languid, honey-soaked vocals and distant angelic whispers, from thumping 808 club beats to crunching tape loops, and from silky, smooth R&B to whirling organ sonatas. Cabral became enamored by the idea of flight as a harbinger of both progress and apocalypse, and that was expressed in the textures and compositional techniques she utilized. Swarms, flocks, flies, angels, spaceships, flying saucers - all are represented sonically by Cabral and her Juno-106 synthesizer.

The Boston combo has a youthful style, but without getting into the teeny bopper stuff that New Kids were known for--the tunes are a lot meatier and grittier than that. And at the same time, Classic Example avoids the type of aggressive, in-your-face new jack swing that was huge in the early 1990s. Emphasizing romantic ballads and slow jams, this 1992 is best described as neo-soul--it's a perfect example of what music critic Nelson George calls Inchretro nuevo.Inch The production is high-tech and hip-hop-influenced, but elements of 1960s and 1970s soul still assert themselves.