Frustrator

Frustrator! (Music Band)

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Most home recordings, especially those that we put out, tend to share a certain attitude towards the science of recording: that its a vehicle and nothing more. None of us have much experience, and that’s something we acknowledge and are proud of. The roughness is the message. It is part of the package. But that’s not true of all home recorders, and Frustrator, the project of Brooklyn’s Tei Blow, is an example of that.

There are two aspects to Frustrator that really struck me the first time I heard them. First, these are pop songs, and not just any pop songs, but meticulously crafted, unbelievably gorgeous pop songs. The underlying structure is there, even when it’s buried under Blow’s avant/post- leanings. Beneath the digital whirring and echo and reverb and quiet, quiet voices, these are achingly beautiful songs, written almost as an ode to the genre that has so defined all American musical output.

Secondly, these songs are not recorded, they are crafted. I mean that in the purest possible sense: they sound like clear glass; they sound clean, masterful. Frustrator’s music undergoes a recording process that is labored-over and cared-for. This isn’t something you could do in a pay-by-the-hour studio. You can’t spend months, even years, perfecting the sound of just one song, one measure, one note. And yet, in a Brooklyn apartment, Blow has made this happen. That deep love for the science of sound, and Blow’s own individual sense of aesthetics (like no one I’ve ever known, really) is what makes Frustrator unique.

More than almost anything else I’ve heard, this is a “beautiful” record; a mix-tape featuring only one artist, different takes on love and regret and loss and joy. It comes perilously close to perfect.