La Big Vic bring a few different worlds together on their debut album, and a lot of that can be attributed to each member's background. Keyboardist Peter Pearson has served as an apprentice under Pink Floyd's live sound producer. Before guitarist Toshio Masuda moved from Japan to America, he produced hip-hop, commercials, and soundtracks, and even performed with a boy band. Violinist and lead singer Emilie Friedlander founded the blog Visitation Rites and is currently the editor of Pitchfork's sister site Altered Zones. Together, they make a kind of swirling electronic dream-pop that defies easy categorization.
Each member's background is represented equally on Actually, where rap beats nestle comfortably with ambient effects and violins squall around laser-like synthesizers. "LYNY", the album's most straightforward song, combines electronic blips and beeps with crashing live drums and swirling guitars to create a colorful, engrossing opener. The disparate elements on "Heyo (Silver Morning)"-- the metallic clang punctuating every downbeat, the submerged guitars sounding like they're being played in aquarium-sized fish tanks, the blaring violin line-- come together in a natural way. Given the way the band members worked in music individually, it's no surprise that Actually sounds great on a pair of quality headphones.
Delivered at languid tempos, the longer-form songs often feel like they're floating, a vibe that "FAO" particularly captures, all of its parts coasting in multiple directions. On such an exploratory album, highlight "Mr. Broken Bird" is where the band comes closest to delivering an anthemic pop tune. "Too many rock stars, not enough gangsters," Friedlander sings, as a variety of synth sounds flutter, twitch, and burst with life beneath her propulsive live drums. The song feels a lot shorter than its nearly six-minute running time.
Album closer "Musica" slows to a snail's pace as the band gradually shifts from textural subtlety to climactic guitar work, its loose structure making way for a stretch of improvisation that has grounding in both noise and psychedelic music. This 11-minute track, like most of the songs on Actually, finds a way to toe the line between the synthetic and the organic. Using the breadth of their musical language, La Big Vic manage to create a strand of experimental music that is as wide-spanning in feeling as it is in sound.
