Eat Lights Become Lights :: Autopia

Ever since I heard the cut Dark Matter/Light Hearts on Northern Star Records’ Psychedelica 4, I knew the full-length from Eat Lights Become Lights was going to be a smoking outing. Autopia {Enraptured Records, 2011} is so damn good and realized I’m not really sure what to say that isn’t said in the record itself.

Obvious ‘neo-krautrock’ pigeon-holing is bound to happen, but there is far more going on in Autopia to render it another revivalist eunuch. As far as that krautrock goes, Eat Lights Become Lights aren’t honing in on one specific period, or a handful of definitive trademarks. Where others might focus on a specific point to define themselves, or get so wrapped up in recreating a particular time, Eat Lights Become Lights puts Autopia out as part of an ongoing tradition, a continuing update and layering that takes that tradition and keeps it vital and alive. They not only take it all to heart, they may have digested the heart itself.

Being that Eat lights Become Lights is obviously far more than just knee-jerk whip-smart, there’s more stewing in the pot than 40 year old bratwurst; All Aboard, to me, is as much Lemon Jelly in some aspects as it is sauerkraut. There’s an emphatic modernness that makes the record as timely as it is timeless. Some of the frothy abrasives peppered throughout call to mind other pioneers like Spiritualized and even post-rock champions like Trans Am as much as the unhurried passages touch on older outfits like Tangerine Dream or more languid techno. Autopia may revel in a certain sonic ‘road trip’ mentality by design, but there are rich undercurrents and exits that graft on an emotional depth, from melancholy to ecstasy, that leave you feeling anything but cold.

Much of the origins they look to promoted an ‘idyllic’ {interpretation is yours…}, and often skewed and satirical, vision of a possible future to be. Autopia hones in on the same thing, but avoids looking backwards to an out of date anticipation of what may come and reheating it for some empty nostalgia trip that leads nowhere. Shimmering, propulsive, driving…Autopia is their future. A future that never comes…And if it did, Eat Lights Become Lights would be off finding another one. One that I’m sure would be as rich, assured and deftly executed as Autopia. Eat Lights Becomes Lights aren’t promoting a cliched ‘future’ that may or may not have happened, they remind you of possibilities.

Dark Matter/Light Hearts :: Eat Lights Become Lights {taken from Psychedelica 4, Northern Star Records, 2010}