Home Video's Automatic Process

Home Video's album The Automatic Process contains no actual home video in it. So, take a deep breath, and carry on reading. This New York via New Orleans band revels in a world that's murky, grey, and lonely which might be as yawn inducing as a home video but thankfully, they're really quite good at what they do. Clearly in touch with its inner Radiohead, Elbow, and anti-depressants, The Automatic Process creates a series of atmospherically challenging works centered around these influences. The album's moody brilliance comes from the fact that the band sound as though they've had their hearts and minds beat up several times over and took to their instruments as a form of therapy.

Far from cheery, Home Video create the sounds of glumness using synths, pianos, strings with such German like efficiency that they're coldness should never be questioned. The bleak landscape these guys create is truly a beautiful thing to behold and somehow, someway, the band finds a sense of melody in this minimal, stark, soundscape. It's truly gorgeous stuff that manages to be catchy, hypnotic, and even dancey at times...in a gothic kind of way. As potentially grim as The Automatic Process could have been, Home Video manage to make it sound better than anything Radiohead could have produced during their noodling period. I really like the stark, clean, and slightly cruel sounding record that Home Video have come up with. This isn't a record loaded with hit singles, but rather a record that's crammed with dark, rich music that's as stirring and thought provoking as it is scary and weird.

From the grim grooves of, "I Can Make You Feel It," to the minimal beauty of, "Every Love That Ever Was," The Automatic Process is a dreary desolate world that's grimly addicting. While the songs tend to be a bit minimal and far from sunshiny, Home Video never allows this to stop them from creating hypnotizingly good songs. It might not be the feel good hit of the fall, but The Automatic Process is good. Get in touch with your dark side, put on this record, and just listen.