Stream Art Contest Two Songs

Stream Art Contest Two Songs

Don’t let the title fool you: There are a lot more than Two Songs on Art Contest’s new album. Actually, Frank Ocean’s favored phrase Two Versions might be more accurate. The inventive Georgia duo were initially planning to follow up 2014 debut album Math Major back in 2015 — we even premiered advance single “Wall Ball” — but a home invasion cost them the original recording of Two Songs. They had to start from scratch, but the new edition of the album is finally ready for release this Friday.

Coleman Monroe and Garrett Burke describe their music as “probability and statistics rock,” a means of communicating how wildly and unpredictably they approach the stylistic tropes we’ve come to recognize as math-rock. The off-kilter time signatures and frantic arpeggios that define the subgenre are in place here, but they’re pieced together in an impressionistic context befitting Art Contest’s origins in ’90s psych-pop haven Athens. The result is a colorful splatter of virtuosity, like Battles trying to make an Animal Collective album. It’s rad, so stream it below, where you can also find a 360° video for “Horror.”

Two Songs is out 6/2 on Post-Echo. Pre-order it here.

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