Conveyor

Since I can remember it’s been possible to buy the scores - not the soundtracks, but the scores - Hollywood films. And ever since seeing the original score of Dante’s Peak being sold on CD in the long-since-closed HMV by my parents' house, I have not understood why anyone would want to do this. The music you are buying was deliberately created to accompany things that are happening on film. It is music you are only supposed to be hearing while you look at these things. It was not meant to be listened to by itself.

Furthermore, consider the following: as long as you have been able to buy film scores on CD, you have also been able to buy the films themselves.

Conveyor's Prime is an album of the aforementioned type: it is a film score album. But it is not boring, or unnecessary, and it does not feel as though it has been deliberately removed from its correct context. Prime is excellent. Prime is better than the film it is ostensibly the score of. Prime is a renegotiation of the film score album into a high concept artistic forgery. The tracks on Prime were written and performed alongside two midnight screenings of George Lucas’ THX 1138 at Nitehawk Cinema in Brooklyn. THX 1138 is as bold and ridiculous a reinterpretation of 1984 as Nosferatu was of Dracula. Blatantly unauthorized and false to the point of becoming an aesthetic archetype on its own. Visually striking, bizarre, and preserved culturally for most, I think, by the image of white-clad bald men being prodded with electrified sticks (or else the in-theater sound system it inspired).






Prime is organized numerically, from “Theme I” to “Theme XIII”, with a melancholy cover of “Words of Love” as something of a coda (probably made for a great end credit sequence). But by the time you get to “Theme VII’, which includes part of a door-closing announcement from the R train, it becomes obvious that you are not just listening to a film score. You are listening to film criticism. Does the R train control the emotions and destiny of its travelers in the same way that the fascist machine of Lucas’ (appropriated) hypothetical future does its citizens? The warbled pounding of “Theme VII” suggests: yes, yes, YES.

“Theme IX” is the closest Prime comes to psychological respite. The track seems to follow the working of gears, the planning of plans – the fall of an empire as seen from the point of view of the bottom-most stone in the imperial palace. Its pebbles happily loosing themselves from the concrete, crumbling to dust. Meanwhile, the subsequent “Theme X” bears a passing resemblance to the backing vocals of a Beach Boys song. But Prime is more of like the devestating crash of ocean on crippled city than it is a righteous Californian wave. Even the most austere tracks on Prime have an implacable sense of tension and urgency. “Theme XI” builds from a series of twitches and jitters into a strike, methodical and precise, but no less fueled by bloodthirst; no less an act of passion. It’s almost off-putting how earthy Prime sounds, how much of the grinding krautrock of Neu! Conveyor seem to inflict their distant futurescape with.

Prime is a reinterpretation; not of THX 1138's original score, but of the film itself. Conveyor seek to evoke the blank-faced, horn-rimmed futurism of Lucas’ dystopian classic; monotony explodes into vengeful angst, which feels itself out as inappropriate, as characters created on swoops of guitar return to their helpless lives.

Prime is out now on Gold Robot Records. - No Fear of Pop

Brooklyn's Conveyor have evolved at a restless rate over the last three years. The foursome's debut EP, 2011's Sun Ray, collected four tracks of radiant synth-pop. Their self-titled 2012 full-length trafficked in colorful, experimental psych-pop. Then, in late 2013, the eccentrics dropped the "Mammal Food"/"Pushups" 7-inch, a one-off containing two fuzz-coated tracks that label Gold Robot Records describes as "brusque, physical... violent, sexual id-based reactions." - Spin

Robin Hilton selects Conveyor as one of his highlights during day 3 of the SXSW Conference. - NPR Music

Conveyor likes its vocal-harmony oohs and aahs, its staggered and coiling two-guitar patterns and its odd meters: 5/4, 7/4, 9/4, all played as if their little rhythmic hiccups were smooth and unremarkable. -Jon Pareles - The New York Times

"“Woolgatherer” is a great summertime track, blending up-and-down harmonies with punchy percussion as well as scorching sunshine and afternoon thunderstorms." - Nathaniel Gravely - I Guess I'm Floating

"What good pop music, and furthermore Conveyor, does so well is create songs and feelings that manage to be child-like without ever feeling childish; weighty sentiments masked by varied and veracious instrumentation, like tampered memories of youth." - Tom Johnson - Gold Flake Paint

"Conveyor, on the other hand, still sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard." - Harley Brown, CoS - Consequence of Sound

"The debut LP from Conveyor is a bold first offering that shows a band artistically naked, presenting themselves and their thoughts unedited, with no creative boundaries." -Zach Hart - We Listen For You

Indeed, it’s been hard not to catch that excitement based on the electronic-infused, organically-founded grooves and mathematically-centered rhythms the band has been serving up. That excitement is sure to spread further upon the highly-anticipated, up-coming release of their self-titled debut by Paper Garden Records. - Turntable Kitchen

Through the release of an EP, several multi-colored 7" singles, and breakout performances at this year's SXSW, Conveyor has grabbed the attention of many across the country. - FILTER Magazine

Many talented friends have been brought in to help out, which just adds to the possibility that this could be one of the biggest breakout debut albums of 2012. - BeatsPerMinute

This track is a beautiful entrance into a new year and displays a smaller band that by the end of the year could easily be (and should be) a name celebrated on many best of lists. - We Listen For You