Bird Show

Green Inferno, the debut from one-man audio wonder-wall Bird Show (aka Ben Vida), was an instrumental psych-drone journey through the cortex of being’s eye. His sophomore album incorporates his debut’s wild minimalist experiments into a more song-based context without losing its drive to discover new forms of sound. Highly inspired by tribal sounds from around the world, Lightning Ghost is a modern day, prog rock epic that mixes and melds a melee of alien sounds and drifting voices that would threaten to sift apart if they weren’t being gently cradled together by the loose and airy rhythmic patterns subsisting amidst all the dreaminess and freedom they can’t help but portray. "Beautiful Spring,” for instance, begins with what sounds like an archival recording of a distant free rock performance — stop-start crashes, guitar feeding back — before layering on the plucks of circular kalimba-like tones, flowing waves of distorted vocals, tinkering bells and woodblock tattering, adding a whole other multi-dimensional world. Multiply the imagination at play in this track alone by nine (the amount of songs on the album) and you’ve got a lot of reason to consider Lightning Ghost one of the most incredible sound experiences around. The fact that Bird Show’s sounds and ideas have been brought into a remotely pop context only make it all the more fascinating.