No Pain In Pop

Blimp Crash Fanatic

Listen to ‘June’. Noise rises huge and from nowhere, like yesterday’s pedalo drifted all night carrying your slumber and now, on waking, the blood in your eyes is staring back at itself from the huge, gleaming hull of this sudden ghost-liner. Natural Numbers is 13-year-old Trevor Fitzhugh from Bedford, Indiana, US.

MP3: Natural Numbers - June

MP3: Natural Numbers - I Wasted My Time

Afloat in similar noise puddles to those manned by Bradford, Dean, Randy et al., Fitzhugh’s bedroom noise is red raw and scabrous as fuck, but there’s a pop that gleams like the eye wires laced on that hull buried at the centre, unabashed and itinerant behind a phalanx of pistons that turn loops on huge cylinders, ’til you realise the liner’s a long-fallen blimp, bobbing w/o harm.

“Well, I am 13 and I live in a very small town in Indiana called Bedford,” says Fitzhugh by way of introduction, making the small leap from boat-edge to dead airship.

“My biggest influences are bands like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, The Jesus & Mary Chain, and also newer acts like Fuck Buttons, Atlas Sound/Deerhunter, and No Age.

“The biggest overall musical influence on the project though is the blending of noise with melody, cacophony with pop structure…”

And blend it does, though Fitzhugh’s voice still stands sore in the wreckage of notes, fumbling around for spare parts, steering the thing to some kind of conclusion.

Rattle around here to collect old material - a new album, titled Forest Diving, should be released on New Year’s Day 2009. Before then, a split with Luggage for Fir Traders Union’s ‘Halves’ series.

Tags: natural numbers, teenage noise

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