Prophecy Sun's bird curious is DIY with enchanting results

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      bird curious (Independent)

      Feel free to shed a tear for the studio-trained producers of the modern era. Twenty years ago, you had to book a session at Mushroom Studios to get a recording that didn’t sound like amateur hour at an after-hours booze can. These days, anyone with access to a laptop and GarageBand can make a professional product. Hell, Prophecy Sun used an iPhone as the main recording console for bird curious, and the results sound disorientingly beautiful.

      Minimalism is the operative word here. The one-take songs are as blissful as they are haunting, constructed primarily out of the singer’s multitracked and digitally processed voice. “Look Up” is nothing but three repeated words—look, up, and down—stretched out over three mantralike minutes. “Night” unfolds as a 3 a.m. nightmare of white-noise tape hiss and soft, ambient droning, while “I Dream of Horses” begins as a sugar-spun lullaby and then, halfway through, morphs into a David Lynch soundtrack filtered through an iron lung.

      Challenging art-pop in the vein of CocoRosie and Laurie Anderson, bird curious isn’t the kind of record that’s going to kick-start the party on a Saturday night. But if you’re looking for something to make your sun-soaked Sunday morning seem a little more serene and dreamy, get ready to be enchanted.

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