I guess you could call Del Rey‘s Immemorial a “sleeper” since it wasn’t the biggest release in the world, but I still really dug it (review here), and it looks like the Chicago outfit are continuing their streak of doing cool stuff by providing an instrumental score to the 1973 animated masterpiece, Fantastic Planet. Not too much of a stylistic stretch for them, but a nifty idea anyhow, and I’m sure it’ll be a good time for anyone lucky enough to be there next week to catch it.

Info comes courtesy of the PR wire:

Psychedelic post-rockers Del Rey perform a live score to the animated sci-fi classic Fantastic Planet at Lincoln Hall on Thursday, May 5. They’ll be joined on the bill by drone merchants White/Light, who will provide accompaniment to a film by Chicago experimental filmmaker Alexander Stewart.

Since their inception in 1997 in the attic of a three-flat in Ukrainian Village, Del Rey has been keeping Chicago’s instrumental rock torch aflame, purveying their brand of sonic lyricism and rhythmic textuality from countless stages and speakers. In 2010, they released their fourth full-length, Immemorial, in North America via At A Loss Recordings (in Europe via Golden Antenna), which fused the punishing grace of the band’s riff- and percussion-driven sound to a more evocative, melodic sensibility.

The beautiful and surreal imagery of Fantastic Planet (1973) may be the perfect cinematic complement for Del Rey‘s cosmic soundscapes and epic odysseys. In the film, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes, humans are kept as pets by blue humanoid alien giants called Traags. Said to be based on the Soviet occupation of the Czech Republic, the story centers on a human named Terr, who escapes the Traags and incites other humans to revolt. Del Rey will also be performing the score in Spain later in May as part of a tour based around their upcoming show at the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona.

Lincoln Hall will provide an ideal setting for the screenings – the club is a converted movie theater.

More so even than their past work on albums like 2006’s A Pyramid for the Living and their rudimentary 2001 debut, Speak it Not Aloud (both albums through My Pal God Records), the At a Loss Recordings premiere for doubly-percussed Chicago quintet Del Rey, called Immemorial, is marked by its ambition. An expansive sound that contains elements of post-rock, psychedelia, driven riff-based rhythms, experimental noise and ambient soundscaping spreads out over Immemorial’s seven tracks, beginning with the fervent tom rumble of 11-plus-minute opener “Return of the Son of Fog Rider” and finding just as much force in the subdued delay guitar Americana of the brief “Innumeracy” and the atmospheric ringing tones of “Ouisch” (say it out loud). It is an offering as likely to hypnotize as it is to engage, and for that variety, all the richer a listening experience.

But though Del Rey present multiple components of their total sound in each song, Immemorial can still be understood in a structure of the long tracks being complemented by the short. The aforementioned “Innumeracy” bleeds into the 10:35 “Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars” with an ease and grace that could only be on purpose, and the whispering synth line that concludes “Ouisch” is also that which begins the 9:39 “These Children that Come at You with Knives,” which gives way to the sort-of afterthought that is “Ancestral,” closing the album with nearly two-and-a-half minutes of hopeful guitar runs. It’s worth noting that in “Return of the Son of Fog Rider,” Immemorial gets a beginning that moves right from the start, and there is a kinetic energy through most of the longer tracks. I don’t know if I’d call it “heavy” in a heavy metal sense, but I’ll be damned if Del Rey’s instrumental explorations don’t carry a weight you can feel in each of your senses.

Read more »