I Listened to Pile’s ’Hot Air Balloon’ EP.

Band: Pile
Album: Hot Air Balloon
Release Date: January 5, 2024
(Bandcamp) || (Instagram) || (Spotify)

Pile has always had a way about them that is destined for the underground. There’s something so cavalier and memorable about them as their records play. As the music becomes a part of you, it becomes a feeling that you will always want to chase. A somber world that you’ll always want to inhabit. But once you step away from it, there’s a way that they seem to settle to the bottom, cover themselves in sediment, and camouflage themselves from some of the bigger flares of indie bands that pop up throughout the never-ending revolving door of talent. This band is one, though, that when their name resurfaces, they wash over you like a glowing nostalgia, one where you want to never let the feeling go. There’s a sense of calm, like staring at the third phase of a housefire.

There’s a distinct sense of swelling in the opening track of this EP. It starts to compile itself over the structure of the first two minutes and fifteen seconds, genesising with a ticking and revolving percussion, rolling forth with deliberate simplicity. The guitar loop flickers in and out of reality, showing face in micropeaks, creating an aural sea of stars to behold across a flat open landscape. The texture resolves itself throughout the song, as the purposeful drab vocals billow out in a low fog. The hesitation, the throb of empty that comes before the large crash in the finale of the song has as much of an impact, as robust of a personality as the rest of the track, all told. ‘Scaling Walls’ is one of my favorite songs of the year so far.

‘Only For a Reminder’ and ‘Exits Blocked’ buzz and fuzz along, like some spirit caught in a hive. Static and distortion are nowhere to be found. These are clean instruments and clean tones, but a vibration rests in the droning vocals. All five songs are in the same musical lexicon, but these two in particular feel related somehow, connected through a unified cord. The same, in some way, can be said for ‘The Birds Attacked My Hot Air Balloon’ and ‘You Get to Decide’, both of them feeling like they’re raining down from some gray Thom-Yorke-ian cloud, soaking everything in mood.

Austerity is the name of the game throughout this release. Even in somewhat effervescent moments of bubbling and ascending synths, there’s a dogged battery to be assumed. Things feel organically assembled, cobbled together in a mass by a warm and revolving gravity. The sounds tend to stick. Nothing on this release stretches too far beyond the hue of where it all begins. It’s a hum in the same tone, concentric circles marrying in rich and robust pulses. As an experiment on a theme, this works as such a brilliant EP, one that works as a perfect halo around last year’s All Fiction. Part rock, part indie laboratory, I find this to be one of the most interesting and captivating collections of sounds I’ll hear all year. The way they make restrained and minimal compositions sound like they carry beyond a horizon is a masterstroke.

For Fans Of: Aloha, Benton Falls, Logh
Check Out: Only For a Reminder