Arms Of Tripoli – One Way Plastic

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Track List

1. Edwards Edward
2. Pseudo Recreations
3. She’s Onion
4. Nude Hawaii
5. Lander

Arms Of Tripoli

One Way Plastic

Started on a dare, Arms of Tripoli is Southern California’s best kept sonic secret. In 1987 all four member of Arms of Tripoli were working at the same frozen yogurt stand in Hawthorne, CA. Manager Allen Porter (guitar, sitar) told his 3 night shift workers Michael Bouvet (bass, hookah), George Tseng (drums, statistics) and K.C. Maloney (guitar, mood, sexuality) that if they didn’t sell 17 pints of Very Berry Iced Routine frozen yogurt by 12 midnight they’d have to start a band with him called Arms of Lisa Loeb. Of course, such a task is impossible (even in Hawthorne, CA LOL!). After spending the next 30 years learning their instruments they finally started working on “One Way Plastic”.

Originally a collection of dad rock, garage band covers of Alice Cooper, Boston and Lynyrd Skynyrd, over the next 3 years through creative mixing and digital editing “One Way Plastic” became the great post-rock work it is today. Nary a remnant of those original covers remain. When they were set to release the EP they realized that there was already someone named Lisa Loeb who had a hit in the 90’s with the coffeehouse rock song “Stay (I Missed You)”. Visibly distraught, they resigned to calling the band Arms of Tripoli. That’s when they were met with more bad news. Apparently there was already a post rock band in Los Angeles called Arms of Tripoli that had been releasing high quality music since the early 2010’s and they were notoriously litigious. All seemed lost and they considered changing their name to Fake, Fanciful, Beautiful: The Hunger Remainz. But as fate would have it, George Tseng ended up winning $43,000 on a slot machine in Laughlin, NV. Using these funds they came to an agreement to buy the name Arms of Tripoli from the existing band (which included ownership of their 3 previous releases “All The Fallen Embers”, “Dreaming In Tongues” and “Daughters”). They even had a little bit of money left over which they used to fund a group trip to Raging Waters water park in San Dimas, CA!!

Nowadays you can catch Arms of Tripoli playing live every weekend to throngs of innocent bystanders at Universal City Walk in Universal City, CA. It has ample parking and is within walking distance to a metro stop.

FLTTRY180
Release Date:  July 24, 2020
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Arms Of Tripoli – Daughters

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Track List

1. English Breakfast
2. Honey Booze
3. Landlord Thumb Wars
4. Spider Newscast
5. Here Comes The Blood
6. Crib Notes
7. Cuddle And Hum

Arms Of Tripoli - Daughters

Since its humble beginnings, Arms Of Tripoli has pioneered the art of instrumental rock, utilizing a non-conventional format to creating innovative and timeless sounding indie music. Not easily pigeonholed, Arms of Tripoli has often been dubbed post-rock and math-rock, due to their progressive tendencies and dynamic and layered sound. Using some standard rock fare such as guitar, bass and drums along with the addition of less-typical rock instrumentation, such as Vibraphone, Rhodes and Omni-Chord, Arms Of Tripoli has been able to stand out amongst the sea of post-rock and carve out a niche all its own. At the heart of their sound are well written songs with very catchy melodies, at times melancholy and often cinematic while being free of over indulgence.

Based out of Los Angeles, CA and formed in July of 2011, Arms of Tripoli continues to be an ever-evolving and uniquely independent instrumental band. After parting ways with long-time friends Robert Bauwens and Vic Lazar in late 2014, the remaining core, consisting of Mike Bouvet, Jaime Galvez, and George Tseng welcomed the arrival of Allen Porter. Allen had previously worked with Mike on other side projects and came with immensely high recommendations as someone that would not only gel with the rest of the band, but strengthen and fortify its sound. Thus the new line-up was solidified and they all instantly developed camaraderie. The quartet immediately found natural chemistry and started working on new material that would eventually become "Daughters," the highly anticipated Arms Of Tripoli full-length follow up album to 2014’s “Dream in Tongues.”Upon completion of tracking “Daughters,” the band added long-time friend, collaborative partner and extremely talented multi-instrumentalist, KC Maloney (Adult Karate, Radar Cult), to the line-up, filling out the void in the live set and completing the sonic experience of the band.

Arms of Tripoli’s second full length album, Daughters, is truly a post-rock work of art. The dynamic layers of the songs slowly unspool, climatically ramping up to convulsions of euphoria inside the brain. The album is a beautiful reflection of the diverse and numerous influences which are apparent in each member’s contribution to the collection of songs. Shades of many subgenres of progressive, post and math rock sprinkle the album with undertones of compelling influence which all congeal into a solid, substantial overall release for the band’s sophomore LP; a very worthy follow-up to 2014’s Dream in Tongues.

FLTTRY133
Release Date: April 20, 2017
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Arms Of Tripoli – Dream In Tongues

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Track List

1. Miniature Habitats
2. Velcro Thunder Fuck
3. Scraping Skies
4. Escalator Jazz
5. 10th Graders Forever
6. Canna
7. Snowed In
8. Addendum
9. Ahs a Vahs a Vae

Arms Of Tripoli - Dream In Tongues

Arms of Tripoli's first full length album is nothing short of a spectacular sonic great album, characterized by layer upon layer of dream guitars, spread out like a deep field panoramic picture from the Hubble telescope. With this album, the band pushes the boundaries of not only the margins they set for themselves with their debut EP (All the Fallen Embers), but of the instrumental music genres in which they are often classified as well. Again the band collaborated with fellow musicians who lent their own interpretation and vision of the songs to the recording, helping to further shape and structure the overall album.

Dream in Tongues is a unique representation of the evolution of the band in both its musical style and composition techniques. The individual musical idiosyncrasies of each member, along with the additional musical collaborators, all mesh thoroughly into a refreshingly modern approach to the post-rock genre, resulting in an aural delight that is sure to enchant and captivate!

FLTTRY060
Release Date: February 21, 2014
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Arms Of Tripoli – All The Fallen Embers

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Track List

1 - Vikings in the Attic
2 - City Speak
3 - Sectioned by Brooks
4 - Waking Eyes
5 - Cliff Dwellings
6 - Radio Silence

Arms Of Tripoli - All The Fallen Embers

"All the Fallen Embers" is the debut EP from this unique group. The album perfectly showcases the band’s overall playing style, composed of multiple influences, yet remaining true to old roots that generated an interest for playing post-rock music overall. Each track not only introduces the personal influence of each featured member, but also culminates an experience that the band wishes to share with each listener, no matter where that person is in the world.

To say "no track is the same" would be an understatement, as this EP blends the sourced sound through various layers, ultimately creating a new version set apart from the intent stemming from the original demos. This was achieved, in part, through the collaboration with other LA based musicians who lent their skill and distinct sounds to these songs. In addition to each member reigning from a previously established Los Angeles, post rock and instrumental outfits, this debut album is literally an all star institute not to be passed up.

REVIEWS

Masterdog Sings The Browns

All The Fallen Embers is a quite lovely chunk of instrumental post-rock, and considering there's a fair amount of bog standardpost-rock out there it's good to finally happen upon something that at leastmanages to hold the attention for more than a few moments before some kindhypnotic stupor takes hold.

With members from various other bands (Signal Hill, The Half Mantis amongstthem) this coming together of a collective consciousness has resulted in arather charming and surprisingly gentle collection of tunes.
Opening track Vikings In The Attic sounds not unlike Oxford's The Rock Of Travolta (as indeed does Cliff Dwellings which appearslater on) in that the melody and the hook comes first rather than theinsistence that everything must be drenched in reverb and delay. That's not tosay that it's not wonderfully hazy and dreamy, it is, but not to such a degreeas too blur everything into a mush. City Speak is initially slightly more reserved and winsome, and explores a fewmathy corners here and there for good measure. Some tidy basslines drive thesong forward as the guitars swell and chime establishing a haunting narrativebefore opening out and adding a bit of muscle for the closing moments. The bandnever really opt for the all out sonic assault however, which takes somegetting used to. Just when a barrage of noise is expected to come kickingthrough, it never appears. Initially this feels like a bit of a let down, butArms Of Tripoli have other tricks up their sleeve, as evidenced on Sectioned ByBrooks where they segue between moods with great ingenuity, establishingtranquil moods and passages of extreme tension without the need for overbearingdistortion.

Finishing up with the ever changing moods of Cliff Dwellings (think Fugazi onthe Instrumental soundtrack) and Radio Silence (which flirts with dischord andtime in equal measure) All The Fallen Embers is a good solid body of work froma band on form.

Syffal

My post rock diet lately has been a mixture of the dark and dirgey and the inspirationally uplifting "I just out smarted the Lannisters on the field of battle" type shit. I'm either cutting sketches of penises into my forearm in my four cornered room staring at candles or I'm allowing my comrades to lift me up triumphantly in the air as we celebrate with mead and whores.

So then Arms of Tripoli sent in their EP titled All The Fallen Embers...

Now I'm kind of in the middle of both bro bro.

Arms of Tripoli, forget them having a tattoo worthy logo, have managed to enter into my music listening habits as the only post rock band on my manpod to abstain from the distortion pedal and still sound balls as balls. There are stretches on the EP where you're daintily skipping along, while haunted by the soundtrack of course, but until the fucking shit hits the fan you're unaware of the tension building around you, and only when shit slows back down are you aware of where you just were. The entire EP is a lesson in extremes, as one second you're holding your arms out like a scarecrow stoned to the bejeezus and floating along like a hippie chick on a bowl of schwag, and next you're running from paramilitary assasins armed with blowguns and tazers, the dichotomy or juxtaposition, or whatever word you use that makes you feel smarter, is fonduborous bro.

Fonduborous is a word I just typed that doesn't have a red squiggly line under it, so I'm going to let that muthafucker ride bro bro.

All in all, Arms of Tripoli are the tame side of the post rock coin, but remember this coin is dependent on emotion, and these fuckers are that calm guy you know that all of a sudden loses it and calmly shoves a guy's foot up his own ass if given proper bait.

Allow the track Cliff Dwellings to be the track you start from, as the layered guitars tell you there's 17 guitar players, but the build into the gruff tells you they put out on the regular bro bro.

Sun in Scorpio Music

The band was forged under the premise that the most prolific and profound music is created when a strong spirit of collaboration is present. Thus, the band features an ever revolving line up of musicians and artists that accompany its primary members in all aspects of artistic development. It is at its core a creative outlet for everyone, exposing a new and unarchived musical experience for everyone to enjoy. A mellow, yet interesting and dynamic listen is what you will get on all the fallen embers. Arm of Tripoli's approach to music incorporates excellent songwriting and technical proficiency whilst creating memorable tracks.

Beach Sloth

Arms of Tripoli possess a certain relaxed charm in their approach. In many ways what they do is similar to other casual variants of Post-Rock: Tortoise in particular. Blends of jazz can be felt in the use of vibraphones, in the sometimes slow tempos they often employ. Here they may move a bit faster than Tortoise but the sense of each band member having a certain amount of breathing room is employed. In each song the band listens to each other, avoiding any overbearing size. Rather part of the intention is to have an organic, playful structure. Quieter moments fare better as they show this particular emphasis quite well.

‘Vikings in the Attic’ exemplify this approach. No buildups or crescendos are involved like many other Post-Rock bands. Here they get there when they get there. The time to reach little scenes of drama makes it thoroughly enjoyable. On ‘City Embers’ as Arms of Tripoli increase the tempos and volume it still possesses the same, laid-back vibe of the melody’s origin. ‘Sectioned by Brooks’ the song spends its time floating about, reminiscing of the more active earlier half. Finally there is the gem of the collection ‘Cliff Dwellings’ which is so easy, so casual it is infinitely easy to enjoy. The band sounds particularly comfortable here, sounding almost like recent Tortoise albums. It is the song’s end which is really stunning, possessing a gorgeous finale.

Overall this has a mellow vibe which works wonders. ‘all the fallen embers’ shows off the fruits of a band willing to maintain a specific focus on mood more than overwhelming the listener.

Sound Of Confusion

Comprising of members of various instrumental and experimental bands, Los Angeles collective Arms Of Tripoli are staying true to their roots by not compromising their sound for a chance at selling out. They have a core group of members, but also welcome input and collaborations from other like-minded musical souls. 'All The Fallen Embers' is the debut release under this current format and is post-rock with a difference. The difference being that it's not deliberately abstract, indulgent or obtuse, and that the songs, despite their seemingly niche style, will appeal beyond those already absorbed in the genre. You could call it a post-rock starter kit, but that implies that Arms Of Tripoli are somehow watered down or overly commercial, neither of which is true, they simply have great tunes.

The closest we get to the output normally associated with this genre is perhaps 'Walking Eyes', at six minutes long it allows a decent amount of soloing while sticking to the atmospherics, but it might not be the easiest route in for more pop-minded listeners. The fabulous 'Vikings In The Attic' or the melodic 'Cliff Dwellings' maintain their chosen sound with a more universal appeal. It could be 'Radio Silence' that's best of all, fitting in tempo changes, broken beats and a winding guitar line along with the usual post-rock dynamic. It shouldn't be an insult to say that these Californians have taken music that's generally an acquired taste and turned it into something more universally appealing, in fact it takes great skill to do so. If you've been put off by laborious, atmospheric guitarscapes in the past then give this a shot. It might go some way to converting you.

Caleidoscoop

This has everything to do with the layering of the music. The guitar layers, which incidentally are mostly rhythmical, nocturnal and jazzy reminds me of Tortoise. That keeps the music nicely balanced and also brings the depth. Besides Tortoise you can hear influences of June Of 44 Don Caballero, Fugazi and Explosions In The Sky in their music. They build the tension or rather let you dream away on the rippling nice pieces. In addition, they envelop the mostly in the night and melancholic atmosphere. They shine as the driven thereby, glowing coals in the night. Very nice and promising!

FLTTRY046
Release Date: October 19, 2012
© Fluttery Records

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