Last year, Auto!Automatic!! raised $3,510 to record a new album via a successful Kickstarter.com campaign. The instrumental trio landed at Short Circuit Studios — fast becoming THE place for local bands to produce superior recordings on the cheap — and laid down the eight tracks that became their eponymous sophomore LP.
Auto!Automatic!! (Brokenmold Records) is a cohesive, seamlessly produced, well-mixed album that captures the band's blend of post, prog, math and experimental rock as delivered by the current lineup: guitarist Brian Larson, drummer Alex Fedele, and newest member, bassist Adam Khan. Larson is ridiculously adept and can switch up the tone and style of his playing at any given moment, tapping or shredding solos, picking through arpeggios or plucking harmonics, looping notes and building atmospherics, incorporating fuzzy distortion or wailing reverb. Khan brings the grooves to the table, and is skilled enough that he can coordinate and harmonize with Larson, synch up with Fedele's rhythms, or provide a low-end foundation when Larson and Fedele are matching paces. Fedele keeps tight rhythms with seeming ease, setting the speed or matching Larson's change in time signatures, adding a fast breakdown or metal aggressive feel, and all this with nary a superfluous fill to be heard.
The eight-track sophomore ebbs and flows, from quiet and pensive to insistent and intense, to cool and collected. Some tracks play around with menacing dissonance ("FYF," "Premature Esongulation") while others are more groove-oriented ("Suzanne Cook Is a Saint," "2 Girls, World Cup"), but all feature the tight interplay of three musicians who've really come into their sound.
Brokenmold Entertainment celebrates the album's completion with a Saturday night A!A!! CD release show that features support sets by two other high-quality instrumental acts, as well as raffles throughout the night for prizes ranging from a Miller Lite summer beer package to a Sector 9 longboard. CL hosts a pre-show listening party with the band in the Creative Loafing Lounge (our virtual Turntable.fm room) on Friday from noon to 2 p.m. Hear tracks off the new album, then hit the show and pick up a copy the following night.
Details: Auto!Automatic!! CD Release with Poetry n' Lotion, set and setting, Sat., Aug. 20, 9 p.m., Crowbar, Ybor City, $7.
This article appears in Aug 18-24, 2011.