White Car is an industrial space funk outfit based in Chicago, IL. The duo is comprised of Elon Katz, who writes, records and produces the music and Orion Martin who plays live electronic percussion. The music utilizes classic heavy hitting EBM rhythms and early digital synthesis while integrating ideas of pop sensibility, post-punk funk and minimal synth music.
Their debut self-titled EP is a record of eccentric paranoia and restrained emotion, characterized by a voice of hushed stammers and deep obsessive murmurs. The record’s lyrical content explores ideas of hypothesized reality and the perceived nature of truth, instinctive desires in relation to the concept of love, and the apathetic guilt of other’s mania and pain. The skeleton of the music is created by a solid rhythmic foundation of funk, vintage electro and proto-industrial references. Employing the empty spaces of these grooves is an assortment of spontaneously placed clamorous bursts, chugging analog arpeggios, faux brass sections and layered electronic percus- sion. Many of the record’s sounds might be deemed “unusable” by contemporary production standards, yet White Car discovers ways to make sense of tones like electric piano, sampled turntable scratches, vocal scat and orchestra hits. The humor of the sound palette is deliberately used to identify a caricature of fear and darkness.
