The guitar's control panel (colorful square buttons on the top edge) contains 25 song loops — a professional backup band laying down grooves for you.
The eyes have a high proportion of cones to rods in their retinas and are positioned to provide partial binocular vision (that is, the eyes are aimed in the same direction), sighting down grooves on the snout to aim at moving prey.
And as was the case on "Capsule," the album he released last year, his standout partners here are the guitarist Nir Felder, who glides through any solo opportunity he's given, and the drummer Rudy Royston, who lays down grooves that feel at once sturdy and playfully supple.
There's a short, five-minute chill session to catch your breath, then it gets really intense up until a final climax and then a good eight minutes of cool down grooves.
It bookends two hours of unimpeachably greasy, gut-bucket, low-down groove; pure funk nirvana.
"I Might Be Wrong" employs the album's only guitar riff, dissolves and then slinks back to life over a pared-down groove.
Maybe that's reading too much into the song, but at one point, after an especially ferocious guitar solo, there was also a spoken interlude over a slowed-down groove, culminating in the aside, "Selective amnesia is only a heartbeat away".
"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," enjoys a little vocal play on its choruses, but it is not until "Tangled Up in Blue," where the hypnotic rhythms and slowed-down groove begin to build.
A stripped-down, groove-heavy ditty about pervy sexual tastes, it came across like a funkified Fleetwood Mac.
Using six turntables and a couple of CD players, the members -- Ashley Beedle, Rocky and Diesel -- created a spellbinding afternoon of pared-down grooves.
THE AMERICAN ANALOG SET -- This indie-rock band just released "Promise of Love" (Tiger Style), a delectable album in which the songs rest lightly on pared-down grooves.
