Dead Bandit: Memory Thirteen

Dead Bandit make music that travels up the phone lines like a veil of smoke. The duo, consisting of Chicago underground songwriter Ellis Swan and Chicago-based Canadian multi-instrumentalist James Schimpl, gave us the first dose of Dead Bandit in 2021 with their debut album, From the Basement (also on Quindi Records).

Parting with the kind of soundscapes that had you feeling your way through unlit rooms, Swan carried this vibe through to his wonderful 2022 solo release, 3am. Lo-fi folk sketches that captured grainy vignettes of a lonely existence.

In some ways, Memory Thirteen, Dead Bandit’s excellent follow-up to From the Basement, couldn’t be further from the outlier heroics of Swan’s 3am; in others there’s a clear through line that leads to the very same enclave within the experimental terrains.

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There’s an elegant freedom of movement with the compositions that make up Memory Thirteen – a record that changes shape revealing more with each listen. Gloomy guitar sketches and less-is-more percussion that has a ghostly essence. It’s an album that drifts around moonlit rooms, and while many will be quick to point out a local homage to Labradford, Dead Bandit’s approach is vastly different. With soft, roaming sonics and subtle tape hisses, this is anxious, homespun despair that everyone can relate to.

Dead Bandit lead us into their agile sound world with Two Clocks – a dubbed-out atmospheric dispatch from another orbit, flitting between the lines of post-rock and kraut rock at quarter-speed.

The fuzzy drone of the title track is choked by bone-cold AM dread, while the likes of Blackbird and Somewhere to Wait plough through the world of underground cinema that Lilacs & Champagne have previously explored. However, in this instance Dead Bandit cake their sonics in the kind grime that produces unsettling results.

And there’s more of it with Circus and Quickscene. Moody Jarmusch-inspired cosmic folk mixed with dark vortex of that Labradford made their natural habitat all those years ago. A subtle concoction with frightening results.  

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While Staircase is like post-rock burnt-off at the ends, Peel Me an Orange and Revelstoke really gets under the car bonnet of what Dead Bandit are all about. The former, meandering loner psychedelia born from broken dreams, while the shimmering majesty of the latter is a perfect example of how acoustic guitar and synth can successfully coexist.

There’s no let up with Perfume – a hip-hop infused take on library music with the kind of narcotic riff that is the soundtrack to those aforementioned broken dreams. It feeds into album highlight, Blowing Kisses. A track simply designed to blows minds and open new paths to freely explore. Essentially, this where post-rock should be going, as Dead Bandit are the architects of something truly original here.

And the warm distortion of closing track, Across the Road, continues to scour previously untrodden recesses. A haunting conclusion to what feels like an endless journey within a fresh sound world. Memory Thirteen sees Dead Bandit creating the kind of soundscapes that move like a parade of ghosts. Sculptured dreamscapes with scarred textures that illuminate a certain reality and produce emotive results.  

Memory Thirteen is out Friday via Quindi Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.