"It’s not so bad once you’re in it / The way you love is the only limit..."
"It’s not so bad once you’re in it / The way you love is the only limit / To the amount of sun you’re given / To yourself, this is how it feels / When your falling and you can’t / Stop Falling anymore no / You can’t stop falling / You can't stop ..."
"This is disenchantment / This is disenchantment"
These are the opening lyrics of "Disenchantment" by Los Angeles based at rock duo Pink Sky, and the title track of their 5th latest album. The dour poetry cast in a doom gloom spiral right against your ear held up by somber dramatic acoustic piano portends a compelling depressive grip. Not for the faint of heart, not for anyone in the midst of glass cut anxiety, with open wounds. "Disenchantment" is, nonetheless, beautiful in it's sadness. As the track builds upon itself, on the cusp of imploding, with electric guitar and a malevolent drone washing up, a female vocal equally melancholy lifts you up off your seat. Juxtaposed against the aforementioned male vocal, sad in a dry riverbed low growl, the higher register of the female vocal feels hopeful even though big distortion storms are on the horizon and outro.
I am into this, at first I was not but upon repeated listens, it clicked. The dive into sadness somehow washes off some of my own. This has happened to me before, this is why I gravitate to melancholy music I suppose.
This is the point of this review when I cheat. When I cut and paste important information because to write the following in my own words would only feel false as if I know these talented emotional folks in real life.
From Press notey stuff (bracketed):
[Before Pink Sky, Angelica was a microbiologist and Ryan was an English teacher. They’d been married just under two years when Ryan was stopped in highway traffic and almost killed when a speeding semi-truck hit his car and several others. The fallout lasted a few years. In an attempt to help him feel better, Angelica taught Ryan how to paint, and he began to heal emotionally and recover who he was. Things were getting better.]
[But sometimes things keep falling apart. A devastating and complicated pregnancy loss caused an even more painful fallout. Hoping to find a new way to connect, Ryan bought Angelica a drum machine and encouraged her to jam with him. She started adding house beats to Ryan’s recent piano music. They began healing each other by sharing their gifts.]
[Now, Ryan and Angelica are caught in an infinite loop of love, of life after life after life, and Pink Sky is the ongoing documentation of it all, captured in real-time since their debut album FORMS, which they began recording a few months after they started making music together.]
I look forward to diving into the "Disenchantment" album (when I am in the proper headspace). Find the Bandcamp link below and you can do the same.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://www.tiktok.com/@pinkskymusic
https://www.facebook.com/pinkskyband
https://open.spotify.com/artist/0ydHzfWOH5SLD7ekaO6wqW
https://pinksky.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/pink_sky_music/
https://www.pinkskymusic.com/epk
In the summer of 2018, the band released their first album, FORMS, a gentle introduction to the duo. Recorded solely using hardware synthesizers, drum machines, samplers and an electric piano, FORMS is the band’s most minimalist and aspirational album to date. The self-released album hit #13 on the NACC Electronic Chart and #184 on the NACC Top 200—and gained a lot of local community support, becoming the #5 most played album on WYCE 88.1 FM in 2018.
In the summer of 2018, just as Forms was about to be released, the band recorded Meditations I and II. The experimental sister albums were the result of a week of exploration and improvisation, and several hours of recordings distilled into two albums. The albums mark a conceptual turning point for the band, as they began to reflect on the world around them. The band is able to hold space for beauty and hope in songs like “A Safe Warm Space,” the final song on Meditations I, an ambient song that is both expansive and bittersweet — while also holding space for fear, anxiety, and frustration in songs like “Where We Go,” which builds tension and intensity on a repetitive theme over the course of several minutes. The duality between fear and hope, light and heavy is what has come to define the band’s sound.
Following the release of Meditations I and II, the band spent the next two years in the studio focusing on their craft, writing, producing, and expanding their musical arsenal to include software instruments and capabilities. In 2020, the band began to regularly release singles, despite their preference of long-form albums. EPQ1 is a collection of these singles. By the end of 2020, this exercise was interrupted when Ryan and Angelica found their voices and began recording lyrical material for what would become their 4th album, Total Devotion.
The band’s extensive catalog reflects their path towards healing and the many deaths and rebirths that happened along the way.
Pink Sky's latest album "Disenchantment" is out now.
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