Black Forest

Having each cut their musical teeth many years prior on bands like Cows, Butthole Surfers, and Scratch Acid, Seattle's A Frames formed during the late '90s and began collectively designing their own brand of stripped-down neo-modern experimental noise. Erin Sullivan's angular, angry guitars and bleak, deadpan lyrics march over Lars Finberg's robotic trashcan beats and Min Yee's stirring, sexy low end. Over a handful of now collectible 7's and two albums, the A Frames have issued minimalist, propulsive songs about apocalyptic cultural shifts and surveillance strategies. More textural and complex, Black Forest retains the rawness of their earliest releases; the album is a cold, sterilized cacophony that illustrates meltdowns, laser love and greed. The A Frames make anachronistic analog dance hits and post-modern blues ballads for binary code casualties.