The dots between Panther and Sun Angle are connectable, but not especially pronounced. Where the former depended on precise, sexy musicianship and repetitive hooks, Sun Angle finds pleasure in a looser, more effervescent sound. Sun Angle’s three members—Salas-Humara, Copy’s Marius Libman on bass and Paper/Upper/Cuts’ Papi Fimbres on drums and flute—work from a palette that’s thick with the sort of foggy reverb we’ve come to expect from the emerging chillwave subgenre, but also ripe with a frenetic energy that’s passed between members like a hot potato. While Fimbres’ melodic, cymbal-heavy percussion gifts all of his projects with a certain post-bop swagger, Libman and Salas-Humara seem especially willing to turn in a jazzy direction (“Yes Beach” is alternately modal and free-flowing; “Seriously Innocent” sounds at times like guitar-led ’70s fusion).
On “Vague Light,” it
seems as if each member of Sun Angle is playing in a genre that’s in
direct opposition to those of his bandmates. Salas-Humara is off in his
prog world while Fimbres plays frantic Latin jazz and Libman plugs away
on some minimal trance music. But two minutes in, after a brief
breakdown, all three return more intense than ever to force the
track—kicking and screaming—into submission. These guys know exactly
what they’re doing; they’re just doing it the hard way. That stubborn
determination to make something unclassifiable and fresh pays off
throughout the EP.
SEE IT: Sun Angle releases its self-titled EP on Tuesday, Nov. 8, at Holocene, with Wooden Indian Burial Ground and Our Brother the Native. 9 pm. $5. 21+.
