artemis

If such a joyous sonic welter as the music of Oakland's Artemis needs a handle, then call it “pavement psychedelia,” or “urban robot raga” or “trip-hop.” On a song like “Hypno,” spectral keyboard washes and sinuous dance beats set up a feeling of warm alienation before the singer's voice heats things further. Over the thump and shimmer, she croons with detached fervor, the production dissolving in a storm of pixie-dust disco until a rude riot of effects snaps the tether and she vanishes.

“We usually describe it as lush symphonic electro retro-pop,” says Artemis, adding “We like to blend organic real-world sounds and mix it with electronic effects.” Aesthetically, the band is a poppier variant on trip-hop, with layers of beats and synth effects providing atmospherics for sophisticated classic rock song structures and the velvet swoop of Artemis's vocals. “I started singing before I started talking,” says the vocalist,”So there was a natural progression. I was in choirs and had classical voice training all through high school and always loved being on stage. I didn't decide to pursue music as a career until a few years after college. I moved to San Francisco and met the people I'm still working with now.”

That would be the RTFM collective, which includes the polymathic likes of Daniel Berkman (multi-instrumentalist and wizard of the kora, a twelve-string harp-lute used extensively in West African music), Cliff Tune (the drummer, who adds to orthodox skin-pounding masses of programmed beats layered for pallidly funky effect) and Keith Crusher (producer, programmer and sonic theoretician) lowering the ambient temperature to dry-ice. Despite the variety of syncretic means, the whole wraps around the singer in true rockist fashion like a flash-frozen Big Brother & the Holding Company.

The fine tension between tradition and experimentation begins with the lady out front- “I grew up listening to a lot of classical and world-y music,” remembers Artemis, “The Beatles, The Police, Peter Gabriel, Van Morrison, Joni, Bowie - all over the board. When I decided I wanted to make electronic music I really didn't know what that meant and wound up writing music with someone in San Francisco who wrote with Logic. At that point, I was writing songs with a guitar because I didn't have anything else to write with. I didn't want to have a guitar band or do rock, but with synthesizers, I could write music as I heard it in my head. “

That music pulses with downtempo beats while ambient sound FX sinks tethers from the world outside into the listener only to pull them pleasantly loose with the band's coruscating riffs and hooky churn. Artemis presides over this aural slow-burn like one of Wim Wenders' angels; warm, wise, detached and waiting for you..