The Brooklyn band Hi Red Center just cut a record which I find to be noisy, bombastic, and eccentric. Their immediate draw is musicianship and instrumentation. Architectural Failures has not only drums, synths, bass, and guitar (all played well), but also vibraphone and trombone featured prominently.

The happy result is a classy avant-garde jazz feel routed carefully through the channels of contemporary independent pop. Manic horn-based improvisations coincide with pleasant pop arrangements. Often one catches ominous undercurrents of heavily distorted amplification of the vibraphone. Tumultuous aberrations of noise are balanced with more restrained sensibilities, keeping time with an overall jazz theme.

The album has nicely syncopated vocal harmonies, which seem rather thin at times in contrast to romping base lines and unpredictable drum movements. I like the record for its eagerness to make music that sounds totally opposite of what gets radio play and fills big arenas. There is something undeniably fascinating about listening to an album, loving it, and knowing that such a sound won't have any affect on the mainstream for years, if ever. It's not a happy feeling necessarily, just a little surreal.

My favorite tracks are "Captain Waltz" for its quintessence and "Bunnies Are Full of Magic" for its lumbering post-jazz introduction.