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Growing

Color Wheel | Troubleman
By ZACH BARON  |  June 6, 2006
3.0 3.0 Stars
060609_growing_main1
COVER ART: If there's something vulnerable about it, there's also something defiant

Growing’s trip from drone trio in metal disguise to metal duo in drone disguise hasn’t always been smooth — last year’s His Return sounded as if the two had been murdered by their own effects pedals, with not a human in sight left to manipulate the guitar strings. But the genre confusion has cleared on their fourth CD, a visceral, teasing, primary-colored disc that scratches the cognitive dissonance of guitars played loud but recorded soft and shiny in favor of the glitchier stuff of art, or techno anyway. Growing lay their metal out on the table on “Fancy Period,” then chop it to little dusky bits. And if there’s something vulnerable about the pastel sun and bumpy orange clouds on Color Wheel’s cover — a reflexive bully-victim response to any accusations of music-as-scenery — there’s also something defiant, blue skies and cotton clouds right till the last, suddenly direct chords of “Green Pasture” rip through the mix.

On the Web
Growing:
http://www.growingsound.com/

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