Day of Mangos is a creative, moody synth-pop record layered with lots of strange sounds and infectious hooks. Local three-piece Dead Recipe recorded it last year, but it’s not really the band you’ll get if you see them live right now.
For one thing, they recorded it when they were only a two-piece (Austin natives Kyle Albrecht and Camille Lewis). When they performed these songs live initially, they tried to recreate it as accurately as possible, which meant relying heavily on backing tracks.
“We were interested in seeing how much sound we could produce with just the two of us. We were singing over big sample sections of our songs. Then this year, we just tried to strip everything down,” says Lewis.
Part of that change-over is the addition of third member, Tom Clary. They are starting over, in a sense. Rather than try to get every layer of electronics into their set, they start with just guitar, drums and keyboards, and build up from there. One of their biggest influences for this new direction is early Talking Heads, which was minimalistic at its core, while still being incredibly experimental.
Is Dead Recipe a New Wave band now? Kind of, but even that definition doesn’t totally define them. They are more like pop experimentalists that are using whatever means they have to express themselves.
“We’re still using electronics. It’s a little less karaoke. It breathes a little more. If we had an electronic malfunction, we wanted that to not be the death of us,” says Albrecht.
INFO: 9 p.m. Friday, Aug. 19. Crepe Place, 1134 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. $8. 429-6994.
