Syko Friend - Angel's Ride LP
Sophie Weil has been making music as Syko Friend since 2011, traversing the sundry zones of some nebulous present-day underground, hauling amps and pedals, writing songs, recording tapes—carrying on the work of musical creation that threads back through generations of hazily-remembered basement gigs and dreamy nighttime guitar tunes, plaintive vocals ripping over blurry reverb-soaked instrumentals, purifying release welling up in the walls of feedback. Sounds undergirded here and there by metal or grunge or western riffs, but slowed, layered, a couple pings of echo and the space for it all to linger and you’re brought somewhere decidedly outside of any present-day timeframe or specific genre reference point, somewhere closer to lost; turned around, dark out, all too fogged out in the predawn but you swear you keep hearing these tunes bleeding in from the distance… Angel’s Ride keeps the vibe going: splices of pure tone wash give way to unpolished, deceptively simple descending licks, harshening sections and breakthroughs to sweet, openchord melodies. It all ends in a few seconds of free, open-feeling loop zone, hazy even as the moment ends, and somewhere in the mix a pedal clicks off.
- Mark Iosifescu
- Mark Iosifescu