May 2007 (PDF) - Antigravity Magazine

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16_antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative
COVER FEATURE music THE BALLY WHO KEEP ON KEEPIN’ ON WITH A NEW ALBUM AND A NEWFOUND DRIVE interview by jason songe jason@liveneworleans.com photos by zack smith smitzack@gmail.com After listening to the new Bally Who album, Keep on Dawn, a friend told me he couldn’t decide whether it was genius or boring. Truthfully, it’s both, depending on when you listen to it. The 79-minute opus created by the brothers Duffourc is best experienced in a comfy chair, in the dark, under the influence of depressants and/or stimulants. If you approach the mood record, whose songs are seamlessly and purposefully connected and meant to be enjoyed as a whole, with impatience, say in a car, and skip randomly through it, you’ll miss the power of it. Out of the fifteen tracks, there are a few immediately catchy songs that could have ended up on popular radio when it was still playing good music, but for the most part, this is an album of four-minutes-plus, unrushed stretched epics that reveal themselves over lengthy pastures of different movements. For two guys that have existed on the outside of New Orleans consciousness, this album is quite an accomplishment. For the last year, Jacques and Rene Duffourc rode their bikes from their Treme home to Metairie to record and mix the album. Their use of the studio as an instrument and their courageous, limitless sense of experimentalism is obvious on the amount of layers they employ and the layers of guitar, cymbals, and parade and tribal drums that make the album so wonderfully monstrous in sections. The noise and ambient-oriented sections of the album recall TV on the Radio, while the dreamier, more expansive parts are reminiscent of Pink Floyd and Radiohead—Keep on Dawn is simply a mantra. Phrases and words repeat over and over until slight hypnosis and calm accompany them. The highlight of Keep on Dawn is when Bryan Spitzfaden, band MC and spiritual director, reads a verbatim account from runner Roger Bannister about his world record mile over music that mirrors the happenings in the tale. The motivational song is about how people can accomplish the impossible if they have the will. Though the album is partly inspirational and love-and-relationship-themed, it also deals with loss (the brothers lost their boyhood Lakeview home to Katrina) and is a distinctly New Orleans record. Sounds from cars riding on the underpass, parades, storms, and even Ray Nagin’s infamous WWL interview litter it, as do references to Ernie K-Doe and floods. ANTIGRAVITY sat down with Jacques and Rene at their home and talked to them about Keep on Dawn and their plans for it. antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative_17
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May 2007 (PDF) - Antigravity Magazine

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