All Tiny Creatures was birthed a handful of years ago (give or take a few fingers) by Tom Wincek, to be nurtured and raised alone. The project’s debut, Segni, was an instrument-only affair — baby’s first four steps, if you will. But All Tiny Creatures sprouted faster than bamboo and was a fully-formed band by the time its first full length, Harbors, was released in 2011. Now consisting of Wincek, Andrew Fitzpatrick, Ben Derickson, and Matthew Skemp, All Tiny Creatures is slated to release their follow-up effort, the fully-realized Dark Clock. In anticipation of its release, I spoke with guitarist and at-times vocalist Andrew Fitzpatrick.
Dark Clock begins and ends with a loop. A loop, or a small section of sound that can be repeated, has always served as the building block for All Tiny Creatures’ songs: “We’ll start with a guitar loop of some sort, and then we’ll chop it up into micro-loops and then re-arrange those and then come up with a new melody,” Andrew says. From there, ATC will “sort of re-imagine the different melodic contexts — just kind of come up with different progressions and stuff. And from there flush it out with different instrumentation.”
The results are at times perplexing, usually staggering, and always bright. Dark Clock‘s six-minute starter, “Comets,” is a prime candidate for all three: a gushing of reverberating drums, washed-out vocals, and a butt-load of playful bleep-blorps that I’m not properly qualified to write about. It both sweeps you up and gently places you back down before you’ve even realized the journey ATC has taken you on. I really don’t want to say it’s reminiscent of “Intro” from M83’s most recent offering, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, but “Comets” builds from and bleeds that same ’80s-enchanted blood.
Yet Dark Clock offers much more than architectural soundscapes, even going so far as to boast a number of more straightforward “pop” tunes. The fourth track, “All Die Out,” pumps out verses of Wincek’s shimmering vocals over a thumping bass. But when the chorus hits, the octave shifts and with it warps one of the coolest guitar tones I’ve ever heard. These “pop” tracks are handled in a different manner, as Andrew explains, “other songs are maybe what a typical approach to rock’n’roll songwriting might be: coming up with a guitar part… and then some keyboard part to complement it… then a chorus.” These songs, while taking a more typical approach, certainly don’t take a backseat: “All Die Out” and “The Book” are amongst the album’s standouts.
And song structure isn’t the only change-up Dark Clock tosses. While “vocals weren’t a priority at all” at ATC’s inception, Dark Clock further progresses the band’s use of both vocals and lyrics. Andrew acknowledges, “With Harbors, it was a conscious decision that we wanted to start having vocals and sing on stage. But on that album it was atmospheric; it was more of another instrument that we used… on [Dark Clock] we wrote lyrics.” Not to mention, Harbors boasted guest vocals on nearly every other track; Dark Clock‘s singing duties were handled entirely by Wincek and Fitzpatrick.
The added emphasis on vocals is just one of the ways that aids Dark Clock in feeling like a concoction from a fully fleshed-out musical group. Agreeing, Andrew adds, “We’re growing as a band and being more collaborative, and as a result more influences are coming to the table and our love of pop music is starting to show through a bit more.” Whereas Segni and sections of Harbors were written solely by Wincek, Dark Clock is a completely collaborative effort. All of the band member’s backgrounds (electronic, dance, rock) are starting to mesh together; as Andrew puts it, “There’s sort of a fusion that occurs.” That fusion is exactly what makes Dark Clock (and ATC’s music in general) so difficult to pin down.
Dark Clock certainly has an ’80s tinge to it, but its scope is so vast and all encompassing that you can’t limit it to that tag. It’s also clearly influenced by the various dance-rock stylings of ATC’s four members, but it isn’t dance-rock, either. I suppose when the basis for a record is “the idea of what pop music might mean… if different bands in the past had different technology available to them at the time,” the end result is bound to be colossal cluster-cuss. And tracks like “Impossible Season” and “Wave Particles” — busy and persistent, yet above all, gratifying — definitely adhere to the chaotic clutter. But they also don’t really have anything (at least musically) to be compared to.
Instead, Dark Clock brings to mind images of explorers and pioneers, veering off into unknown territories. It is indeed an exploration of sound; a curious work that celebrates its curiosity. Within each song, ATC constantly strives for something greater and grander until every ounce of noise swirls out in a wake of bleeps and high registers — yet the band savors each repeated loop along the way. There’s a certain level of productivity ATC employs throughout their labor, and even the least engaged moment on the album (the 44-second interlude “Hypertext”) is still relatively active.
In just about every way, Dark Clock is a step up from Harbors. Tracks “Chase Lights” and “A Lone Sound” radiate joy like a puppy dog in a sick-kid ward. “The Book” not only kills the robo-vocal sample, but has a chorus that unfolds with open arms. There are more than a couple of songs here I could see playing out as 10- or 15-minute jams live. And somehow ATC pulls it all off, seamlessly blending track into track, until closer “Reunion” ends in a bubbling-over of imaginative blips.
To me, All Tiny Creatures is a band that changes the way we, as listeners, think about music. For Andrew, it’s “the totally of music” that drives ATC’s work: they look at it from the perspective of the whole — the limitless. And their songs, built on loops, can literally play without end. Dark Clock perfectly encapsulates this view, finding a band forever stricken with awe and inspiration by the world that created it. Once again, All Tiny Creatures seem poised to tackle every possibility that awaits them out there in the universe.
Dark Clock is streaming now at Pitchfork Advance and will be released on Tuesday by Hometapes. All Tiny Creatures currently has no plans to tour behind the album, but there will be a release show celebrating Dark Clock at the Dragonfly Lounge in Madison this Friday, June 28.