Straya

By Simon Calder

Next Thursday, March 29th, “Back to the City” will host its first showcase event at Mortimers Bar. With performances by Straya, Lucid Vanguard, wetter, and Tony the Scribe, and music videos from the first two seasons of the weekly “Back to the City Sessions” projected on the big screen between the bands.

Following last week’s interview with showcase opener Tony the Scribe, RIFT Magazine today premieres a 45-minute episode of “Back to the City.” Devoted to showcasing headliners Straya, featuring live footage recorded, mixed, and mastered at the Minnehaha Recording Company during Straya’s recent Back to the City Session, and a long-form conversation about “Sobereyed” featuring all four members of Straya and Back to the City host and curator Simon Calder.

“Sobereyed,” which was released last month, is Straya’s second full-length record and the first to be released by Los Angeles based record label Chain Letter Collective. It is, as the progressive/post-metal quartet’s website describes a “57-minute work thatrepresents two years of writing and growth.” Throughout this interview, Straya considers some new ways in which “Sobereyed” explores the idea of growth, with a new emphasis on symbiosis and circularity, as opposed to the more linear ascent narrative implied by the title and cover of Straya’s first record, “Healthy Steps.”

At the heart of the episode is an in-depth discussion of “Acoustic Song (for rock quartet and fixed media),” the opening lyrics to which are “fall down the stairwell,” suggesting descent. Throughout the song, the synth parts and percussion of Mark Engelmann, Cody Nelson, and Toby Ramaswamy then both accentuate and challenge the structure first set by Sanjeev Mishra’s acoustic chord pattern; with each chord change, the rhythmic feel radically alters.

“In the cyclical, I’ve found structural stability,” asserts Mishra, with Engelmann observing that the album’s sequencing elicits a sort of return to the point of origin, and Ramaswamy noting that “every re-occurrence is slightly different” due to the combination of two prominent attributes of the record: co-existing layers and cycling.

Ultimately, though, the record is – as Mishra concludes “an invitation: come into our home, and see where we’ve been hanging out.”

Straya can be seen live and hung out with at Mortimers Bar next Thursday, March 29th. Also on that bill is Tony the Scribe, whose series of interviews with Back to the City is available here: http://riftmagazine.com/2018/03/08/back-to-the-city-mpls-music-conversation-presents-mixed-messages/ Lucid Vanguard and wetter, whose long-form Back to the City interviews will be released by RIFT on Wednesday, March 21st, and Friday, March 23rd, respectively.

event link: https://www.facebook.com/events/338521836645300/

Back to the City Showcase 1 YouTube Playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOt8qg80_A419X_Oh9D3AUX28QTKgmWsq