The Moontrane Conductors

The subtle sounds of The Moontrane Conductors debut EmptySea stick with you. Utilizing a diverse sonic palette from live instruments, digital sounds and several vocalists, Rob Easson and Noah Perry craft blunted journeys into acoustic downtempo, dubbed-out jazz and trip hop. It might be the first listen or maybe the forth, but these tracks will creep and crawl their way into your sub-conscious.

From the first track, beats smear like warm butter, making everything taste better. The rest of the album features both artists on synths, bass and guitar to create sublime music that slowly spins into an inspiring chill-out yarn. Just in time for the long winter nights and the first days of Spring, EmptySea warms things up.

Perry and Easson wrote and recorded most of the album in their studio in Oakland over the past two years. The local flavor is thick like fog on "Never the Sun," which crunches and cracks through Perry's rainy vocals. Buggafunk gets deep into the sub bass before digging it out with funk guitar and whammy synths to keep heads bobbing even in the horizontal position. "Wonderin" gets dangerously close to Phil Spector pop with spacey guitar, strings and a chorus that is infectious. The diversity will inevitably cause first time listeners to ask "is this the same band?” Then they will want to hear it again.