LISTEN HERE: Nebular Wave wipes out the dinosaurs
The trick with creating instrumental music is how to name it.
Composers of yore didn’t sweat it. Beethoven got to No. 5 and named it his Fifth. Boom. Done.
Ever since, instrumental nomenclature has been a struggle. Like bands themselves, music without lyrics resists being named.
For the guys in the Edmonton experimental acoustic-electronic trio Nebular Wave, the music on their new album came first. Then because they had to name it something, the title, Chicxulub, was chosen later. It’s the name of the asteroid that allegedly wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, and the theme of the 23-minute epic jam that forms the title track (a small sample can be heard below).
Composer-guitarist Dan Mabee, who’s partnered with synthesizerist Nathaniel Sutton (formerly of Brother Octopus, a weird band in a weird town) and drummer Mike Sine, says he came up with a story to go with it. “It’s about alien life forms that came down and tried to make life as a first go around as dinosaurs, but it wasn’t working out. They didn’t have hands. So the Cosmic Ones created the asteroid to kill the dinosaurs – and kick start the mammals!”
Let’s hope the Cosmic Ones don’t do that again.
Chicxulub will be available exclusively in vinyl form on Saturday, Jan. 11 at the Aviary, when the band plays its LP release show, with area noise rock gurus Zebra Pulse and The Holy Drone Travellers.
At the show, Mabee says that Nebular Wave will perform – half improv, half arranged – the title track of the album, but might not do the entire 23 minutes.
“We don’t want to drive people too crazy,” he says. “We keep an eye on the room. And when it starts to drive us crazy, that’s how we know it’s driving the audience crazy.”
LISTEN HERE: 3 minutes and 11 seconds of Chicxulub:
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