Bexar Bexar
Many of the songs have this feeling that's hard to describe but so satisfying to hear: like a sadness that's been buried and you're soldiering quietly on, and not making a show of it. The spare, lovely melodies swell and recede, all with perfect precision and tremendous understated feeling. How this music can be so emotional without ever getting sentimental or corny is completely beyond me – Ira Glass, This American Life
Releases
Selected Press
Many of the songs have this feeling that's hard to describe but so satisfying to hear: like a sadness that's been buried and you're soldiering quietly on, and not making a show of it. The spare, lovely melodies swell and recede, all with perfect precision and tremendous understated feeling. How this music can be so emotional without ever getting sentimental or corny is completely beyond me
whether feelings generated from the songs are akin to the stark melancholy of looking upon a freshly fallen snow or the hopeful joy of waking to a fresh autumn day, this is one hell of a great album.
It's Bexar's skill in treading the line between the evocative and the universal that makes Tropism seem more engaging than 37 minutes of apparent tranquility should: less a still life than a blank canvas for the mind.
These ten songs are acoustic palms; prayers, unbelievable and quaint, that haunt the conscious; unreal and empty. Yet each one, every last enduring moment of each note, hope and reverie, simply has to be… Such frailty is indescribable. Listen. Just…listen.
...Equal parts Eno, Mum and Mogwai. His songs construct equally barren landscapes: 'Aidos' burbles up from nothing and swells into a circle of warm, chiming guitars, evoking what it must be like to float on your back in the Gulf of Mexico without another soul for miles; the waterlogged, percolating synths of 'Kt' approximate the best beatless moments of Boards Of Canada, or at least an instrumental B-side from Kid A. Bexar Bexar often contributes music to dress the scenes on NPR's 'This American Life,' and it's easy to see why. Haralambos makes perfect background music for quiet, reflective moments: reading a book, lying in the dark, imagining you're the last person on earth.
Detached and beautifully detailed, Bexar Bexar’s ambient soundscapes are composed of hushed acoustic guitars, shimmering feedback, and tape manipulations, creating a gentle hum of magnetic pulses that transport the listener into the Texas county from which the group takes its name...
A sadness pervades much of the material (“The Messy Message,” “Sweet Devil”), lending it an affecting gravitas, while shimmering settings like “Window Piece” and “Unsettled and Unstable” are about as lovely and tranquil as pastoral ambient music gets.