nobody & mystic chords of memory

Tree Coloured See

Elvin Estella (aka Nobody) is something of a musical chameleon; one minute he's effortlessly blending into the sun-bleached/baggy-jeans+bong backdrop of psych-dipped hip-hop on 'And Everything Else' - the next he's plundering Axelrod's vaults for inspiration with free wheeling odyssey 'Pacific Drift'. The one thing that remains starkly clear however, is that Nobody is certainly somebody. Following on from the sneak-preview afforded by Earsugar's superlative 7", Nobody and Mystic Chords of Memory (Estella, Chris Gunst and Jen Cohe) are back for a full-length following a period of fertile collaboration on each other's respective releases. Bursting with a rainbow of pop-speckled melodies, each of the eleven-tracks borne by the 'Tree Colored See' has the protagonists each contributing their own special ingredient to the aural gumbo - with former Beachwood Sparks singer/guitarist Gunst allowing just the right level of folksiness to pervade the Bryds-esque primary colour chords of Nobody's Stereolab-indebted Gaelic-hop beats. Opening with 'The Seed', Nobody and Mystic Chords of Memory ferment a sense of spiralling abandon that sees cosmic effects tricking down the thrumming bank of beats and 45-vocals - with the resultant composition both thrillingly new whilst deeply rooted within the broader palate of Americana. Next up 'Decisions, Decisions' burns its fingers on some James Brown-stabs whilst the trio of composers styles are left to clash joyously, 'Broaden A New Sound' is a wonderfully skew-whiffed platter of shuffling vitamin-C pop, whilst 'Floating' (and it's James Bond strings) sees you out on a beatific cloud of jelly-pink loveliness.