“Solarsphere”
from the album White Flight
2006
iTunes
MP3 – “Solarsphere” [right-click/save-as]
White Flight is Justin Roelofs, formerly of the Anniversary; White Flight is his solo debut via the brand-new label Range Life Records out of Lawrence, Kansas, founded by scene-provocateur Zach Hangauere.
You could say White Flight fits in with cut-and-paste artists or pop-soundscapists like Gorillaz, Danger Doom, the Avalanche, the Go! Team, and Beck in his Stereopathetic Soul Manure days in how they all treat songs as open canvases with clearly defined borders. But he is not like them in the way a mango isn’t like a banana or a kiwi just because all three are fruits. Roelofs’ music sprouts and blossoms from a different seed, a hybrid of indie-rock, underground hip-hop and fractured, trippy folk-rock, among others.
He often bangs against the edges of his songs but doesn’t breach or fracture them. By doing that, he avoids indulgent anarchy and errant clutter. He also likes to shift and glide from one “moment” to another in the same song, the way Modest Mouse can do (a similarity compounded by Roelofs’ voice, which can resemble Isaac Brock’s). His compositions are relatively short (13 in forty minutes), but most are produced lavishly — embellished and embroidered with vocals and live instruments and layers and loops of sound and music. An ambitious, inspired debut that ought to resonate and flourish in several devoted cyber-cults.