Procedure Club / Doomed Forever

Slumberland

Procedure Club is a collaborative "bedroom-pop" project founded in 2008 by Polish emigre Adam Malec and a woman known only as Andrea. Sharing musical tastes in shoegaze and pop bands of the '80s and '90s like Black Tambourine and The Jesus and Mary Chain, as well as a common admiration for baroque composers such as Purcell and Bach, the two began recording as a natural progression from the boredom of living in poverty in New Haven, Connecticut. Out of this god-forsaken alliance comes melodic song structures comprised of heavily reverbed vocals, stuttering mechanical drum beats, dirty bass, synths and alternately washed-out and jangly guitars. Following a well-received string of tapes and CDRs, Procedure Club's first "proper" album is noisy, lo-fi pop with the emphasis on noise. From the pure synth pop of "Feel Sorry for Me" to the overdriven swoon of "Dead Bird" to the blown-out "Nautical Song," carefully constructed tunes are given a fierce work-over by layers of guitar fuzz and synth scree. Songs like "Vermont" and "Artificial Light" could practically be some lost C86 gems, while "Awfully Managed Pigeons" looks back to early Velvet Underground's garage racket (check the sick Cale-esque baseline) and "Rather" fondly recalls Amy Linton's late Henry's Dress / Aislers Set classics. Throughout, Andrea's vocals are the secret weapon, neatly playing catchy melodies off the drum machine clatter and guitar haze. On Doomed Forever, Procedure Club strikes just the right balance between the songs and the noise, between structure and chaos. Rather than allowing the recording methodology to stand-in for tunes and ideas, they've created a rather amazing record where those parts mesh perfectly and create a unique sound-world that challenges the ear as it coaxes the listener in with melody.

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