Sound Animal Premiere “Through the Wall” Video; Out Your Cages EP Available Now
Berkeley, California-based solo experimentalist Sound Animal released their four-song Out Your Cages EP in January as one of a slew of short releases out alongside the 2021 debut full-length, NewSoundLand, and the forthcoming follow-up, Death of Ages. Already Sound Animal has answered this release with two singles in April — the timely “Russia” and the exclamatory Springtime ode “Bird Party!” — and the audacious, gonna-make-noise-with-this-now ethic that pervades the music as a whole is only emphasized here in the title. If there are cages — style, genre — then yes, this is out of them. And if you want to read it another way, it’s also encouraging you to get out your own cages. Come on. Get weird.
I was fortunate enough in that I happened to be wearing headphones during my first encounter with “Through the Wall,” and as such the howling guitar, vague homemade percussion wobbles and eerie call to drone prayer — plus piano and who knows what else — felt all the more encompassing. This is willfully avant garde soundmaking, so of course it’s not going to be for everyone, and Out Your Cages — which I choose to read in the more empowering interpretation of the title, particularly in light of 10-minute 
opening/longest track (immediate points) “Don’t Break, Break Out” — is conscious of the overall affect even if getting there involves a process of improvisation and using uncommon elements. There are those who will simply hear it as noise, whether that’s “Through the Wall” or the maybe-harmonica melody at the forefront of “Don’t Break, Break Out,” the nod to off-kilter electronics like an alternate dimension krautrock in “In-the-Dirt” — the title seemingly derived from the fuzz that emerges — or the more directly molten psychedelia of “Outlaw of No,” but that’s art of the accomplishment too.
As music, Sound Animal‘s output is intended to challenge, but on the most basic creative level, you will hear it and have a response, and that is art at its foundation. You will respond. Feel something. And every now and then, perhaps when the tide of heavy riffing feels most like it’s going to rise up and swallow one whole, a breakout like this is necessary to remind that there’s always new ground to be discovered and that the aural universe is broader than humans can understand or fully process. You could sit with any Sound Animal release and marvel at the minimalism-through-maximalism of the construction or the anything-goes-so-long-as-it-works spirit, or you can put your headphones on and be already gone with it. Up to you. But you’ll feel something either way. You will not be numb.
So here’s to not numb:
Sound Animal, “Through the Wall” video premiere
New Dystopian Inspirational for noble outlaws, an EP on SOUNDCLOUD and BANDCAMP and elsewhere: OUT YOUR CAGES. Melodica, silver flute, pungi, guitar.
Music for the non-masses.
Instruments: Sound Animal uses electric guitars including Gibson The Paul II 1996, Schecter Stiletto Studio-5 bass, one-off lap steel slide, bodhrán, dulcimers, a variety of bows including violin, voice, silver flute, Greek double shepherd’s flute, harmonica, Indonesian suling, Bolivian triangle drum, pungi (snake charmer pipe), khaen (Thai mouth organ), melodica, recorder, double wind wand, penny whistle, slide whistle, boatswain’s pipe, midi, jaw harp, and lots of found objects, sometimes electrified with external pick-ups, for example, electric tennis racket — racket with an external pickup attached and run through pedals.
The silver flute soars, the melodica swears, the guitars fuzz, the harmonica questions, the pungi calls into the night. Much of the music is Acousticelectronc, as it all begins with Sound Animal playing instruments, whether found objects or official, and then that’s often transformed in the DAW.
