(The Syndicate) San Francisco, experimental electronic duo Late Aster release "Ctrl-F Discipline," the latest single from their upcoming debut full-length album, City Livin', due October 24 via Slow & Steady. The artwork for City Livin' was created by acclaimed New York-based Norwegian artist and photographer Tonje Thilesen.
"Ctrl-F Discipline" title nods to the beloved TASCAM's four-track limit: "It's a reference to the discipline of that model; it begins with a Tame Impala-inspired synth that is very recognizable," notes Anni and Aaron.
Since their formation in 2019, the San Francisco-based Late Aster has released one studio EP, 2021's True and Toxic, and one live EP, 2023's Light Rail Session. "I've always been interested in this idea of creating the coolest wallpaper you could think of," Messing muses. "We're like Daft Punk, if they were band nerds."
The equation has paid off with a feature in Tape Op, praise from the SF Chronicle, who called their sounds "unprecedented" and "as impressive a local debut as I've heard this year." And Under the Radar, who called their music, "a fascinating exploration of juxtaposition and expectation."
Messing and Hochhalter are both classically trained; Messing studied Trumpet Performance at Northwestern University, and Hochhalter studied French Horn Performance at the University of Southern California. Environmental attorney by day, synth and visualizer obsessive by night, Messing began solo, recording an EP of voice, piano, and trumpet with animated visual accompaniment; Hochhalter is a founding member of the Billboard Traditional Classical chart-topping wind quintet WindSync.
The essence of the sound of City Livin' then, lies in Late Aster's embrace of a relatively simple, DIY-friendly recording device from the late '90s: the TASCAM Portastudio 414 MKII, which offers a low-fidelity quality and omnipresent fuzz. By virtue of its overall sonic aesthetic, the album is a nod to lo-fi ambient and hip-hop. But in keeping with Late Aster's typical output, the album grabs from every genre within arm's reach, then mixed, once again, with engineer Charles Mueller.
The duo settled on the album's title City Livin' after the track itself was created, inspired by the song's gravitation around a monochromatic core. While there are some melt-your-face components like the peculiarity of the synth and high repetition of the off-beat hi-hat, the song almost reads as numb. It whizzes past you and feels pretty good but is strangely featureless, almost opaque. It's a backhanded reflection of that idea: plenty of shiny objects from food, to people, to art, to parks in the city to distract you from what is essentially the blandness of the human experience-birth, life, and death as a single unit of a massive unknowable universe.
Another highlight is a cover of singer/songwriter great Gillian Welch's "Look at Miss Ohio," from her 2003 album Soul Journey: "We tried to preserve the raw, honest qualities while recasting 'Miss Ohio' into this electronic world," Hochhalter says.
Hochhalter chalks up Late Aster as "an electronica duo, filtering brass instruments through dozens of effects pedals." It's the distinct personality they bring to the party - as well as a distinctly sticky way with songcraft - that makes that "wallpaper" truly sparkle.
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