SIN ROPAS
Tim Hurley vocals, guitars, piano, sampler, concertina, clarinet, bass, assorted manipulations
Danni Iosello drums, percussion, vocals, piano, organ, harmonium, korg, glockenspiel
Formerly of Red Red Meat, Loftus, and Califone, Tim Hurley sings and slides guitar into Danni Iosello’s pale-faced drumming and wreaking harmonium creating post-partem pop that swirls and hides like a ghost through an empty house. There’s the comfortable terror of redemption in these melodies that glide and stammer like the laying on of hands, riding the line where history becomes prophesy. No two alike, long-remembered, assembled only to recall wounded hands and poison kin but finding shimmering revelation expanding through the clausterphobic pile.
Since releasing their first cd, Three Cherries, on Perishable Records in 2000, Tim Hurley and Danni Iosello spent a year on the Baltic coast of Germany on an academic Fulbright grant. While there, they recorded new songs and toured Europe twice. Their new CD, Trickboxes on the Pony Line, released May 6, 2003 on Sad Robot is a culmination of those European home and studio recordings (Lone Star Studio, Nuremburg, Germany) and Chicago basement tracking.
From Pitchfork:
Inspiration works the right way for Hurley and Iosello: bits of folk and blues are thread together with a logic that synthesizes (but never imitates) historically proven rock and roll birthrights, delivering something both intensely modern and blissfully weird….Trickboxes on the Pony Line’s abstract song- movies rely heavily on a series of unfixed, user-provided images–pictures replace sounds, sensations supplant rationalizations, everything goes a little blurry. Push your fists into your eyes and let the lights come up: what you see on the screen is yours. The rest is just guitar.“ (Amanda Petrusich)
From PopMatters :
„Iosello’s loose tip-tappings on sundry flea market junk underlies her asthmatic harmonium exhalations, while Hurley’s ragged voice reaches back into something dusty-American and long-buried, yearning for that connection, yet simultaneously cringing at the swinging bright blade of the future.“ (David Antrobus)
From Rolling Stone:
„Red Red Meat alumni Sin Ropas create mesmerizing sound on their second album. This collection of beautiful, interweaving off-the-cuff riffs and slow-motion observations suggests a futuristic Appalachia…The brilliant ‚Buried with the Footmen‘ layers psychedelic fuzz guitars and playful electronics like an update to ‚I am the Walrus‘. There’s nothing ingratiating enough to call pop on Trickboxes, but there are plenty of nice slowburners.“ (John Dugan)
