GROUP RHODA - At the Dark (from 'Out Of Time, Out Of Touch' LSSN012 - Night School)

RELEASED: August 20th UK, September Rest Of The World.
Group Rhoda is a solo project based in San Francisco. The fruits of a five year journey into self-discipline and personal discovery, Mara Barenbaum's Group Rhoda uses stark musical practices and analogue electronics to evoke imagery and rhythms both atavistic and futuristic. With a grounding in minimal wave and the post-industrial landscape, with a grounding in minimal wave and the post-industrial landscape, Group Rhoda takes surprising detours into tropical rhythm patterns, dubbed-out bass throbs, hypnotic wurlitzer flourishes and, above all, Barenbaum's distinctive, plaintive vocal. The alluring contradiction at the heart of 'Out Of Time, Out Of Touch' is the push of the psychedelic, the hyper-real, the overtly physical and the pull of the artificial, the synthesised, the stark. this contradiction is brought to light continually through-out 'out of time, out of touch' - whether in the classic west coast psychedelic melodic sense played with suicide's mechanical simplicity, or the industrial rhythms of throbbing gristle drenched in a technicolour, sun-blanched imagination.