Venus Hum Get Local

Back in Nashville, Venus Hum was one of my favorite acts to see live. Two guys on synths behind an almost operatic voiced lead singer creating some sweeping electronic music. Not of the bass thumping butt shaking variety - more of an orchestral sway.I grabbed their new CD on aime street for next to nothing (do we know about amie street? I'll post about that later) and discovered in addition to what I was used to, a good 1/2 of the tracks incorporate acoustic guitar and lap steel. Some further digging and closer listening revealed this, from their website...“Tony had the idea that we weren’t going to use synthesizers,” says Kubin, “but it was also going to be one of the most terribly electronic records we could possibly make. For me, that meant putting aside years of oscillator twiddling and patch cords, then pulling out Wurlitzers and vibraphones - things that scare me. I’m a bad player with a computer, so taking that away is even worse. Having to come up with ideas and manipulate those ideas based on things that I’m totally uncomfortable with was exciting for me.”“We had the idea of doing a complete song with only one instrument,” Miracle continues. “On the song ‘Turn Me Around,’ the entire track is acoustic guitar. You wouldn’t necessarily know it if you heard it, but it’s basically computer manipulated guitar. The drum sounds and the sweeps of the strings are guitar. It’s almost like you take an acoustic guitar and you dissect it and look at it through a microscope. We built the track out of that.”You can hear a bunch of the more electronicy bits here: http://www.nettwerk.com/player/VenusHum/But I'll upload something acoustic: