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About Orange 2 by Macula Dog
Macula Dog’s sophomore album, Orange 2 is their most cohesive and purposeful release to date and marks an exciting new stage for the NYC experimental duo. This new collection melds the hard-hitting dynamics of 2020’s Breezy EP with the bands’ own version of traditional verse-chorus-verse pop songs.
Orange 2 was written during the coronavirus lockdown, a stretch of seemingly endless free time that the duo used to fine tune and perfect their new songs while social and environmental aspects of the world were in free fall. The isolation of quarantine also afforded them a respite from live performance, which they used to break out of old routines and songwriting techniques while experimenting with new processes and equipment. Orange 2 is the band’s attempt to write more straightforward songs, each with a prominent lead vocalist. The vocals, which take Macula Dog’s signature processing and voice manipulation to new extremes, are more prominent in the mix than on past releases but hardly conventional. And while this distillation of their vocal sound might not hit the intended “pop singer” mark, it serves as the backbone of Macula Dog’s best songs thus far. As the band says:
“We wanted to make a ‘proper’ record — with 11 pop songs, a distinct, great lead singer, and music you could dance to. Instead we have 11 songs with a singer you can’t understand. We really thought we had made our most accessible album yet until we sat down and listened to the whole thing. This album is a huge failure but may be our best work.”
This modesty and irreverence is typical of Macula Dog, a band that from its earliest days has embraced experimentation and absurdity in equal measure. These 10 songs about chemical preservatives (“Orange 2”), gambling (“Spun”), executive officers (“Smart Man Do”) and misinformation are presented back to back, without the punctuation of interstitial free-form audio found on their previous releases. The instrumentation on Orange 2 hits from all sides in a way that is joyfully unpredictable. From the grinding aluminum rhythm section of the record’s title track to the liquid-rubber melodies in songs like “Go Green” and “Plug,” Orange 2 is filled to the brim with earworms.
As Macula Dog fans know well, the band’s live act has evolved as much as their recordings. When they released their debut EP, the duo were accompanied by miniature clones of themselves that sat on their shoulders (“a four-person electronic duo”). In the band’s new live configuration, they carry their gear on harnesses, adorning themselves with impact-resistant clothing to cushion from injury should their exoskeletal sit-stand legs slip out from under them. The duo also carry a camera and hologram projection system, transforming each member into a fully mobile performance rig, each with a mini jumbotron. They can now move around performance spaces unattached by cords.
“If you don’t like the record, maybe you’ll like the concert,” they say. More modesty from a band that makes an art of embracing the incidental in their creative process and in so doing makes music from another dimension.
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