© 2017

Twenty years have passed since 310 released their first proper album Aug 56. For their eighth release, SMoKE DoGS, they return with the unmistakable 310 tapestry of sound.

The new album bridges the gap between their most ambient (AUG 56 and SNORKELHoUSE) and their upbeat styles, from Recessional to Sixes and Sevens.

Drum wizard Ralph Rolle returns, eclipsing his performance on Sixes and Sevens and creating an even more organic rhythmic feel on SMoKE DoGS. Live guitars and keyboards meld with enigmatic dusty samples.

Recording Rolle’s drumming at New York's legendary Avatar Studios (formerly The Power Station), 310 utilized the sonic power of the room to open up the live drumming aspect of their sound even further.

Once again 310 have created a cinematic experience with each song merging into the next; a soundtrack album for a movie that doesn’t yet exist.


Tyran Grillo album review:

Among the pleasures of spinning a new 310 album is feeling like you've picked up right where you left off. Joseph Dierker (Seattle) and Tim Donovan (New York City) have been slinging amorphous assemblages since their self-released AUG 56. And while the band has moved beyond the scrapbook aesthetic of that 1997 haunting, their layering techniques, slicker productions, and guest musicians have enhanced rather than replaced the ambient shadows at their core. Put another way: they've moved from the suburbs to the city.

310 are possessed of keen ears, which they cast into this grimy matrix as if it were a flea market replete with faded photographs, aural impressions, and tinkering spirits. From each haul, they curate one meticulous gallery after another, each more color-laden than the last. Drummer Ralph Rolle returns from 2007 's Sixes and Sevens, recording his parts at New York City's legendary Avatar Studios to bring spatial dynamism to the proceedings, and going against the grain of the pop industry’s reliance on sampling. That said, 310 does their own fair share of looping, yet because they sample from moving media—films, recordings, everyday noises, etc.—there is as much organicity in their digital manipulations as in Rolle's timekeeping. Their balancing of these forces guarantees that perfect symmetry remains a strange ideal.

310 may have grown up from the boys exploring their grandmother's attic on albums such as SNORKELHoUSE, but traces of that youthful curiosity linger. The title of "Put Down That Phone," for instance, will be familiar to any fans of the duo as the first words spoken on “Pharmacy Within,” the opening track of AUG 56. Whereas that first appearance morphed into a questionable late-night encounter, here that same soundbite sets off a ride through backlit streets. Trumpet and piano mesh into Rolle’s ignitions as a gritty introspection seeps into the foreground.

Before that, however, “SMoKE DoGS Theme" sets the album's stage with an urban majesty that recalls the tactility of Prefuse 73. Live keyboards add to the flow and lend the global snippets that much more cache amid this cross-hatching of machines and flesh. The overall effect is so smooth, it's almost caustic. Likeminded grooves ensue, flitting in and out of frame like light through a windblown curtain. "Chin Music" showcases an uncanny ability to find regularity in the mundane by weaving a meticulous beat around the sounds of dripping water and coughing ("Squeaky Sneakers" utilizes the foley of soles on wooden surface to likeminded whimsical effect). Rolle embodies these impulses and more in a track named after him. Over a swirl of guitars, he is every bit the storyteller, as also in "Check On The Chicken,” through which he carries a sensual denouement toward the stratosphere.

Not all is asphalt and glass, as evidenced by such inter-continental stretches as "Amaroq." Nature limns its edges, even as an incessant pulse reminds us that the world is an ongoing variation on the theme of our brokenness. Whether in the quiet drug of "Pursuit" or the throwback electronica of “Cut Kid," ritual fires stand on their last embers to protest the dark. Even "Out of Towners," with its jazzier inflections and head-nodding itineracy, evokes summery distance by way of 12-string shimmer. Finally, basking in the William Basinsky-esque undercurrent of "SMoKE DoGS (Love Theme)," we know that each circle finished leaves another to be started.

Once again, 310 prove to be masters of their craft, for without them it would cease to exist. Their music is like an old record being played on the phonograph of another life—one that isn't yours but might as well be. It holds mystery on its tongue as if in contemplation of swallowing, choosing instead to spit into the gutter and spin from that punctuation an underlying grammar for the next journey.