Br1ght Pr1mate are onto something big. They are a duo featuring vocalist Lydia Marsala and musician James Therrien who composes and plays music with a Game Boy chip. It’s a very recent musical genre requiring older computers and video game consoles. Therrien’s use of Chip tunes allows him to create a myriad of musical soundscapes that marries pop music to a sound similar to sci fi film scores and sound effects. This is the kind of music you’d hear on the mother ship if you’re ever abducted by aliens. Latest album Night Animals keeps it at once tight and experimental.
No matter how many times one listens to this album, the songs will inspire a different interpretation each time. There is an infinite possibility to what a listener’s mind will imagine and or associate with Therrien’s sounds and the hauntingly effective trance like vocal approach Marsala brings to each number. Despite the unusual soundscape created by the Game chips, this is still rock and roll in essence. It is unafraid to be different and never hesitates to revel in fun.
Opening title track “Night Animals” plays out like an electric piano programmed for repetitive notes, each one sounding similar but tighter than the previous. Segue into “SOURCE CODE” and Marsala sings in a cool, hip futuristic forlorn tone. She treats her electronic Gameboy support like any other backing band. Her eerie tone seems crafted by nature to accompany Therrien’s unique mesh of electronic melodies.
“Outside Myself” gets a little bit funky. The initial electronic line resembles funk keyboard work from the 1970s. Counterpoint from a higher pitched melody creates a winsome layer of sound to feast one’s ears upon. Surround that with light touches of electronic sound effects, and you feel that Marsala is hanging out with R2D2 while she sings this one with a self-restrained vocal approach. She keeps her powerful voice under wraps so it feels almost like it’s dancing to the beat beneath it. A touch of voice and a wedge of electric music go a long way to creating a mood, a scene, and a drama.
“Hibernate” finds Marsala singing with a bit of attitude. She sounds like she’s giving someone a piece of her mind and she rocks it, hitting in sync with the electronic rhythms beneath her vocal melody. This tune has the most life in it when Marsala coos over a heftier bit of electronic melody later in the tune.
“Hypnotized” features the most danceable rhythm track on this album. Whatever Therrien is doing to create that percussive beat, it carries the song forward with a zesty momentum. You can easily picture everyone in a club moving on to the floor and shaking it when this number plays. He layers on more slabs of funk and melody as the song progresses and Marsala is at her sexiest singing about the soundtrack of our lives.
“Sunset Intermission” pokes at the listener’s conscious with tender melodic touches, like a keyboardist tinkling the ivories gently on his piano while pressing an even softer string-like texture out of his synth. Therrien is probably quite gifted on traditional instruments to be able to hear the possibilities in Gamechips and to draw them out with true artistic vision and sensitivity.
“Acid Pity Death Spiral” gets even more progressive with a hypnotic percussion line that sounds partly like a drum machine and partly like a factory machine. Marsala sounds more exotic over this space age percussion and its accompanying melody line That melodic line has the sweetness of a flute and precision of a CNC machinist. There are also the coolest sound bits developed and combined into alternate melodies, effects, and things too new and unusual to have words available to describe them.
“Doppelganger City” ingratiates itself into the listener’s consciousness with an offering of subtle rhythmic flourishes. Therrien shows us what he’s got as he unleashes something that sounds partly like keyboard melodies and partly like the kind of sci fi movie sound effect that indicates when a futuristic device is in operation. I can picture numerous robots being activated and released from their night time chargers, picking up their tools and equipment, and performing tasks for the mad scientist who created them.
“A Little Night Music” begins like a futuristic disco song. The beats are irresistible as they echo with modernistic sound potentials. You can picture a John Travolta android in a white three piece imitating the actor’s moves from Saturday Night Fever, albeit a bit more robotically. The electronic Gameboy melody notes are as hip as anything ever played on an electric guitar or electric keyboard. Those notes zig and zag around the electronic beat like a dancer who maintains a disciplined precision throughout a challenging routine. A smacking percussion device makes you want to dance, nod, or clap along to its infectious groove. By the time you get to the end of this album, you start to think this might be what you hear if you’re ever the victim of an alien abduction or what you’d hear if you came out of cryo-stasis in the year 2525.
Br1ght Pr1mate close out their album with “Space Opera,” an instrumental ode to the epic sci fi movies of the early 20th century. It begins with an electronic melody low end that reminds of the Alan Parson Project from the 1970s. Before the listener knows what hit him, he finds himself deep into a trance-like myriad of oddly appealing sounds. The quirky rhythms here are just weird enough to keep the listener intrigued. Other worldly melodies, rhythms, and strangely appealing special effects keep going off at unusual times in the dramatic unfurling of this alternate universe of music.
Br1ght Pr1mate have found a lot of success since starting out in a Boston basement some years ago. Although the Hub remains their home base, the duo have brought their new found sound to other parts of the country with much success. All they need is to start recording soundtracks for big budget sci movies and or working with big name recording artists to bring their music to the masses. The time might be right for this new expression of pop music.
