Music has a power behind it that can elicit so many waves of reactions within us. It exists side by side with our deepest emotional connections, can be felt as an atmospheric sensation, unlocks – or even creates – memories, and can transcend matter as something behind the physically tangible such as being the source of adrenaline pumping its way into our bodies. For Strange Ranger to call their third proper studio effort Pure Music risks everything to live up to its titular expectation, and yet the Philly-based experimental indie rockers have made a career-definitive listen that exemplifies the relationship between our humanly sensory experiences and song. Following the multi-dimensional trajectory which their 2020 mixtape, No Light in Heaven, traversed, vocalist and guitarist Isaac Eiger, vocalist and electrician Woodman, drummer and sax player Nathan Tucker, and bassist Fred Nixon go deeper out into their outer element. Particles of synthetic pop and deep house beats molecularlizing on the album’s consciously-concerned holy spirit “Wide Awake”, “Dream”, and “Dazed in the Shallows” sound alien yet intimately designed in their ability to connect with feeling everything in the moment, while ambient solar waves sync into guitar-born electricity on “Rain So Hard” and “She’s On Fire” like memory synapses. The past, present and possible future are blurred between as is the space which the listen will discover yoy, giving you the ability to move through strobing clubs as much as it does wilding out with the windows down. Or perhaps, none of it as concrete as the place inside your head that only the listener holds the key to. In its most purest form, Pure Music is sensory and sonic plasticity whose form may have been sourced from a creator, but ultimately is defined by those who come into contact with it.

Highlights: “She’s On Fire”, “Dream”, “Wide Awake”

Strange Ranger’s Pure Music is available now on Fire Talk.

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