Send "Small Black " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 This version of Small Black's debut EP is a remastered update of the original that popped up online last year, now outfitted with two additional tracks. Originally a bedroom duo consisting of Ryan Heyner and Josh Kolenik, Small Black added two new members (including Pitchfork.tv contributors Juan Pieczanski and Jeff Curtin) to bring the insular, demo-like tracks included here to a live setting. And if Small Black are shaping up to be a proper band (their upcoming full-length will feature the expanded line-up), this EP serves as an intriguing portrait of the group in its pollywog stage, making music that is simply stated and occasionally arresting.Much of the EP sounds almost half-formed, as heavy reverb and over-processed synthesizers often overwhelm the subtle melodies and bright patches that anchor the dazed, mercurial songs. Most often, you have to work a little harder for the small rewards; beneath the tangled synth chatter and seasick sway of "Weird Machines" is a joviality that could be blown up to fill a large space (confirmed by a live version that appeared on a recent split EP with the like-minded Washed Out). Such revelry can spill out of a track at any given moment, and major highlight "Despicable Dogs" is by far the best demonstration of it here. But Heyner and Kolenik seem more interested in establishing a mood than pursuing full-on pop pleasures; they often sabotage their more accessible moments with noisy sample cycles and calamitous, disorienting percussion....full text |
| Cokemachineglow |
| It’s tempting, when discussing an EP like Small Black, to lazily snipe it as scapegoat. I did it last year with Washed Out’s High Times cassette, which I didn’t so much review as dismiss for being part of an irritating trend. So Small Black seem damned from the start: not only are they part of the same irritating trend, but a late arrival on the chillwave scene. If you can’t read the term “chillwave scene” without rolling your eyes perhaps you’ll understand why dismissal seems, comparatively, like the path of least resistance. After all, summer is long gone, the decade has been wrapped up nicely, and now glo-fi and whatever other catch-all trend labels that came to fleeting prominence in ’09 are cataloged and sweepingly considered. Wavves’ Nathan Williams still writes new material and Neon Indian clears 3k in secondary touring markets—those overnight sensations anticipate some longevity from their bolstered careers—but as trending blips they’ve faded from the indie-public consciousness. Which is when the ruminations and lamentations and States of the Blogospheric Nation kick in: if another new shitgaze/glo-fi act should cross our paths, let us use the occasion to reconsider the genres that so briefly were! Toro Y Moi? It’s winter, man, what are you playing at? “Now that the chillwave summer is behind us…” Though perhaps it isn’t strictly seasonal. Pitchfork even wrote, ever so boldly, that “chillwave was never really about the beach”; not that I disagree, but where are the ardent throngs the genre’s diehards asserting the essential beach-like qualities? It seems, with trends like these, that we’re always arguing against nobody in particular. Maybe it’s a novel idea, but consider: Small Black’s EP sounds quite good even when it’s cold outside. You might think, despite any intuitive sense of it as an insidious cash-in on passe trend, that a group of musicians simply came together to write and record some songs, many of which just happen to employ hazy synth sounds and a drum machine. But then chillwave was never really about hazy synths and a drum machine. If these bands share one fundamental quality beyond oversold hype, it’s a shallow fascination with juvenile nostalgia. Washed Out, Neon Indian, Best Coast, um, “Memory Tapes”: all this is really about is a very particular and particularly appealing escapism. That’s their selling point, but it’s also typically the problem. For many of these bands, nostalgia is both the end and the means by which they arrive there—a vaguely old-seeming aesthetic evokes a space that seems vaguely old, which for forlorn youth is something to revel in....full text |
| Bedwettingcosmonaut |
| At first glance, everything about Small Black points to the assumption that they are doomed to be just another hot trend band that will burn out before they even have a chance to light. They hail from the hipster infested streets of Brooklyn, make generous usage of electronically fuzzed out lo-fi, and already have the lauded pitchfork stamp of approval. However, in contrast to many other bands who have experienced similar scenarios and failed miserably for it, Small Black’s debut self titled EP points to something definitively bigger than the sum of their parts. The aforementioned pitchfork approved single “Despicable Dogs” is a glimmering start to the demure assaulting sounds of the EP, showcasing the band’s defiant ability of densely layering simple blankets of soundscape with melodic vocals which become a mainstay in the EP’s makeup. Meanwhile “Weird Machines” makes haste with an electrifying keyboard lead that takes the spotlight as the hazy background covers vocalist Ryan Heyners swoon in an blanket of atmospheric snow. The EP’s middle piece “Bad Lover” gives you just enough time to bring yourself down from the euphoria inducing stoned cloud of fuzz to catch the EP’s closing one two punch of “Pleasant Experience” and “Lady In The Wires” which both subsequently squash any voice of unreason that states that these guys are not legitimate....full text |
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