As a producer, Rusty Santos has placed his hand in many, many jars. In addition to his work on game-changers like Animal Collective's Sung Tongs and Panda Bear's Person Pitch, Santos has also helped shaped sounds on record for Gang Gang Dance, fellow Paw Track clan member Dent May, as well as last year's much slept-upon Born Ruffians long-player Red Yellow & Blue. Trying to pick up on threads that run constant throughout a résumé that varied would make for some headphone headaches. Fortunately, Santos formed a band of his own.
The Present is Santos' recent collaboration with Japanese musician Mina and Jesse Lee of Gang Gang Dance and White Magic, a project in which Santos further experiments with fusing together much of the same gossamer textures and elements that galvanized the walls of sound he helped erect as a producer. In October of last year, the trio released World I See, a remarkably arranged spirit journey that, according to Santos, was written and recorded stream of consciousness, using just guitar, keys, and drums. But it never sounds that simple nor familiar-- the line between organic and synthetic remains ever blurred. In fact, the sharp divide between the Present's output and their straight-ahead setup is a gap still very much a part of what also makes the band's latest audiomosaic, The Way We Are, just as fascinating.
Opener "Heavens on Ice" spans 13 minutes of astral transmissions and vocal warp zones. Couched somewhere in all the synthetic chaos sits a short-lived stretch of breathtaking guitar melody and tribal rhythms totally unblemished. It's worth the mining, pretty yet inaccessible. Interlude "Love Melody" is equally beautiful, a chunk of magnetic oasis that sits between even more shards of manipulated sound, all of which clatter and skitter and morph into duo "Symbols on High" and "Africanized Beatniks". For better or worse, The Way We Are is more easily digested than its predecessor. Though the synth palette is less abrasive and the song lengths infinitely less intimidating (only "Saltwater Trails" comes close to flirting with the 10-minute mark), it's still very closely related in purpose. "Shapeshifter" sandwiches a grind of harsh screens and lunar-laundromat noise between cascades of keys. To close: "Press Play", a staunchly industrial jam that lets only a few slivers of light through before calling it a day. This is a difficult listening experience for certain, but check those album titles: Santos seems to be trying to transcend the idea of listening experience in particular. He's taken to finding a spectrum of sound that mirrors more than just a moment.
