Our Broken Time Machine

Stern Records is proud to present Our Broken Time Machine, welcoming back Bug Bus Piano with their second full-length release on the label.

As a freshly assembled puzzle swells, countless connections begin to bubble within the slowly buckling square. Some sections fall into the shadows of the new mountains, which consist of five or six bits and rising. And meanwhile there's fissures, the pieces are twisting. A thick paperboard nub tears off, held by a socket as its trunk drifts away. Moments become hours, so light is moving across the puzzle and now the shadowed areas are in showcase. There's clusters of gnarled abstraction and the twisted laminate reflects light which flares off in odd directions. And now what was newly different is already becoming different again.

The 11 tracks which comprise Our Broken Time Machine fall short of capturing a week by one day. What does it mean to present one week as permanently and maddeningly incomplete? The closed loop remains a dancing mirage. Consider the spirit of Bug Bus Piano - a spirit which so often seems torn between softly smiling omnipotence and redlined mortal passions. And its chops are in excellent health. Having even further honed the trademark combination of benevolent lilt and loose, graceful pathos, the band handily taps into a depth of feeling here not dissimilar to Bochum Welt, Neil Young’s “Philadelphia”, Billy Barber, or others, while flitting deftly across a sonic breadth that sounds like little else. Among the finest drums in the Bug Bus Piano catalog...and that guitar! Yet one wonders what's to be made of the droll juxtapositions. The second day is subtitled 'The Harbor', after which we're asked to imagine something odd: the sound of crying eyes. Subsequently, the fourth day, 'The Rotunda', follows endless nightmares. Meaning the nightmares continue? "Now far from home, a tired ship pulls into dock and rests in unfamiliar territory." That happened one day. And the day that followed was not the same.