Before starting on songwriting for Yellow Ostrich's latest album, singer/guitarist Alex Schaaf moved into the bands Brooklyn practice space and immersed himself in the study of such astronomers as Carl Sagan and Frank Drake. Keeping up his day job of digitizing vintage home films by day, Schaaf devoted the next 9 months to exploring the depths of the galaxy from a tiny windowless room, whose lighting he synthetically altered to reflect the arrival and passing of daylight each morning and night. Around the same time, Yellow Ostrich drummer/percussionist Michael Tapper ventured into the infinite in a much more literal sense by departing on a sailing trip from Mexico to Hawaii that left him out at sea for nearly a month. Borrowing its title from Sagans 1980 PBS series, Cosmos expands Yellow Ostrichs intensely guitar-driven alt-rock with dreamy electronic arrangements to mirror the mood of Schaaf and Tappers retreats away from the everyday world. While the album embodies a sense of both wonder and isolation, Yellow Ostrichs refined melodies and dense yet delicate sonic textures make Cosmos as powerfully intimate as it is dynamic. The follow-up to Yellow Ostrichs 2012 EP Ghost, Cosmos captures that uneasy tension by merging raw guitar riffs, lush atmospherics, brain-bending electro effects, sweetly ethereal harmonies, and earnest but unsettling lyrics. Engineered by Beau Sorenson (Death Cab for Cutie, Superchunk, Sparklehorse) and mixed by Paul Kolderie (Radiohead, Pixies, Dinosaur Jr.), the album saw its inception when Schaaf sketched out skeletal versions of his songs, then brought them to Tapper to begin fleshing out beats and arrangements. Having delved into the work of early-Krautrock and 70s synth bands while on tour the previous year, Schaaf and Tapper set to broadening their sound with locked grooves and textures inspired by artists like Neu!, Kluster, and Kraftwerk. Opening Cosmos with the ominous Terrors and closing with the hushed, hymnlike Dont Be Afraid, Yellow Ostrich lace together electronic elements and organic instrumentation to build a mood thats sometimes gloomy, sometimes euphoric, and often an inextricable mix of the two. Throughout the album, Schaafs fascination with Earth and beyond plays out both literally and as metaphor: there are songs like In the Dark (a stark and dreamlike meditation on the journey of NASAs Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts), as well as Shades (whose urgent guitar lines and frantic piano reflect the anxiety that Schaaf imagines many people felt upon seeing the first published photos of Earth and realizing how small and insignificant we really are). One of the albums most exhilarating numbers, Any Wonderpairs a swirling soundscape and questioning lyrics that closely encapsulate the thematic heart of Cosmos (Im gonna try hard to tear it all apart/I wanna be stunned, dont you?). In writing Any Wonder, Schaaf again tapped into Carl Sagans careful illumination of the romantic side of science. A lot of people have thi

• Format Detail: 1LP Standard w/ DL
• Format: Vinyl
• Genre: Rock

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