Ceres & Calypso in the Deep Time

Colorado-based group Candy Claws formed in 2007 and first surfaced with a noisy, glitchy, and gleeful alternate soundtrack to the Werner Herzog film The White Diamond (Two Airships/Exploder Falls). Their subsequent albums took inspiration from the wonders of the natural world, with 2009 debut full-length In the Dream of the Sea Life influenced by marine biologist Rachel Carsons book The Sea Around Us, and 2010 follow-up Hidden Lands designed as a musical companion to The Secret Life of the Forest by Richard M. Ketchum. Poet Jenn Morea found In the Dream of the Sea Life while searching for music related to Carsons work, and she reached out to Candy Claws co-founder Ryan Hover. Within a couple of months, they decided to collaborate on an album together. Morea wrote poems telling the story of a girl named Calypso and a white seal named Ceres and their adventures travelling throughout the Mesozoic Era. The three members of Candy Claws each sang lyrics corresponding to different characters, with Hank Bertholf as Calypso and K Hover playing Ceres, while Ryan Hover represented the Deep Time. Even if it didnt have a complex fantasy storyline, Ceres & Calypso in the Deep Time would be Candy Claws most ambitious work based on its vast, overwhelming sound alone. While their previous efforts were enthusiastic but often messy pastiches of abstract psych-pop and dreamy electronic textures, Ceres & Calypso is a near-perfect fusion of Elephant 6-style neo-psychedelia and the blown-out heaviness of shoegaze. With help from composer Bryan Senti, who provided orchestral arrangements created from Philip Glass sample library, the group transform the music into a towering wall of sound using extensive compression and distortion meant to evoke the effects of time dilation and fossilization upon being sent back to the Mesozoic Era. While this obscures the albums lyrics, dig deeper and a vividly expressive romance is revealed, as are colorful descriptions of the prehistoric environment. The melodic hooks stand out almost immediately, with the bleary yet bouncy "New Forest (Five Heads of the Sun)" being an instant highlight. Other songs fold in recognizable traces of exotica and baroque pop, and some nearly sound like warped spy movie themes. Ceres & Calypso is the type of album that establishes a world of its own, inspiring the listener to dive in and devote time to uncovering and interpreting every last detail of the story. After the album appeared in 2013, Candy Claws disbanded, and K and Ryan Hover expanded on the albums mixture of exotica, psychedelia, and dream pop with their subsequent band, Sound of Ceres. Ceres & Calypso endured as a cult favorite embraced by audiences who championed albums like Sweet Trips Velocity : Design : Comfort and Mid-Air Thiefs Crumbling, and was re-pressed multiple times over the years. ~ Paul Simpson