Led by Jade Tcimpidis and featuring Kalen Walther (bass) and Kirsten Ourada (drums), Seattle-based outfit 129,600 has been described as “explor[ing] the limits of tradition in the consumer era, weaving dustbowl melodies with psychic dreamscapes and slacker-jazz meditations.” This singular style was captured by lead track ‘Techi’, “where all manner of details spin from a taut rhythm, making for a twitchy, volatile mood,” as we put it in a preview. Tcimpidis’s delivery was wired into this frantic tone, landing somewhere between manic and paranoid and accentuated by saxophone to, as we continued, “evok[e] the paranoid vibe of Coppola’s The Conversation, with all its schemes and surveillance.”
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Not that all of the album fits into this anxious thriller tension. Though no less detailed, opener ‘Mattress’ feels in many ways a kind of antithesis, a jazzy shuffle over which Tcimpidis’s vocals unspool, the vibe this time more like the uncontained joy upon opening the curtains to a sunny morning. The folky patter of ‘Pruner’ and ‘Wait’ calls to mind Friendship‘s wistful contemplations, the vocals airy and smooth, while ‘My Babe Tonight’ leans fully into a retro dancehall croon with equal parts mischief and romance.
It’s around there, halfway through the record, that you realise the description of “psychic dreamscapes and slacker-jazz meditations” is more than inventive PR copy. Because the 129,600 style is best described as a dream, or rather a series of dreams. Playful, ever-shifting, tending towards the past. Never outstaying their welcome but suggestive of worlds far larger than what’s shown at any given time. The penultimate track ‘For Bear’ encapsulates the mood, clocking in comfortably under three minutes but somehow taking the listener from a tenebrous sax opening through to a full-bodied Lynchian croon. Sashaying with all of the promise and suggestion of a dream, the cloaked meaning, not to mention the inherent melancholy, as though at some level haunted by the knowledge we will have to wake.
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Granular Convection is out now on Ghost Mountain Records and you can get it from the 129,600 Bandcamp page.
