Emeralds: Does It Look Like I'm Here?

Label: Editions Mego

While the experimental trio Emeralds has piles of small-run CD-r and cassette releases, each a snapshot of a particular moment in the Cleveland band's existence, we can best chart the group's course through its more prominent recordings. And Does It Look Like I'm Here? is nothing if not a prominent recording. While often lazily genrefied as a "noise" act, Emeralds have never sat comfortably in that bin, and have in fact been building to the heart-startingly gorgeous kosmische sounds heard on Does It Look for a good long time. Put simply, it's one thing to say your band uses guitars, analog synthesizers, electronics and sequencer; it's another thing to use them as Emeralds does: reaching back and grabbing the Teutonic psychedelia of the 70s by the ass and hurling it into the right now, with spires of synths cascading upward to heaven (or whatever's up in the sky), their heights marked and tracked by Mark McGuire's sympatico guitar work and, on tracks like "Genetic," a choir of fallen angels. Just awesome. Where Emeralds have favored longer tracks in the past, Does It Look is broken into 12 mostly shorter pieces, each with its own way of saying "beautiful." Everything just bursts with fiery color and intensity -- the title track (one of the longer pieces on the record) will leave you shaking down to the molecular level, and you will like it. (The vinyl, by the way, is very limited, so don't wait.) (M.L. Thrope)