CD Review: Digitata :: II Daggers

Digitata
II Daggers
Totally Gross National Product

You could take a look at the component parts of Digitata and think you know what's up: Female vocalist, Rhodes keyboard, squiggly electronics plus live drums equals breathlessly slick electro, right? Not quite. While Maggie Morrison's voice is capable of swooping nimbly from a hushed croon to a catty yowl, she's neither as dispensable as the guest vocalists on most trip-hop tracks, nor as front and center in the mix as all those electro divas with one name (Annie, Kylie, etc.). Instead, her vocals ride in lockstep with Ryan Olson's digital manipulations and Drew Christopherson's crackingly live drums. That duo's done time as the rhythm section of art-hoppers Mel Gibson and the Pants, and it shows. The texture of the album as a whole is kind of smooth peanut butter to MG & the Pants' extra chunky.

The first proper track, "Bangin' Jessica Alba," has been up for streaming on their MySpace page for a while now, but it's an entirely different animal when it makes its way out of quality stereo speakers, and not the shitty little ones on a laptop. What the track has to do with movie star and newly-minted Golden State Warriors fan Alba is anyone's guess, but the groove is certainly thick enough to bang whomever it chooses. The title track that follows is even more darkly menacing and the interweaving components of the song (a skittering flute-like triplet, a pulsing and distorted bass, Morrison's bell-like Rhodes chords) do their best to stay out of the way of the beat's thundering stride. It's not all menacing bass and pounding drums, though. "Marinos Amores" is almost breezy--Morrison's yearning vocals are drawn out over a pastoral backdrop that builds into a slow burn by the song's end.

In a uniformly solid album, though, the two standouts are "Digitata 4 Ever" and "Enter the Palace." The first's hyperkinetic and breathless pace stops up short in the chorus, creating a yawning gap that only makes what surrounds it sound more urgent. And the second features Ryan Olcott (of Mystery Palace, hence the title, I'm guessing) as a male counterpart to Morrison, and the pairing is perfect. Olcott's icy and ghostly vocals seem to grow from the electronics, while Morrison's have just a bit more flint and spark, and are grounded in the woodier tone of the Rhodes. It's most obvious on "Enter the Palace," but that intersection of organic and electronic, analog and digital, is the fulcrum around which Digitata teeters, and II Daggers provides ample evidence that it's a crossroads with a lot of directions to explore.

Buy it from Totally Gross National Product.

Digitata play Wed., May 30 at the Turf Club with Pit er Pat, Mystery Palace and Priestbird. 9:30 p.m. $5. 21+. Corner of University and Snelling Aves., St. Paul. 651.647.0486. turfclub.net. Check out Digitata's MySpace page for more info.