Kevin Bronson on November 28th, 2008

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Talk about your head trips.

“Alpinisms,” the debut album released last month by School of Seven Bells, sounds almost as if it was written by algorithm, its precise latticework of electronics, guitar and vocals somehow forming music that is stark, visceral and downright hallucinatory. It’s work that was fermented in the studio for several years, and as Pitchfork lauds, it was time well spent.

Ben Curtis, the guitarist who departed the Secret Machines to found the band with twin sirens Alejandra and Claudia Deheza (ex-On!Air!Library), seems flattered by the attention, even if he’s a bit puzzled by comparisons to shoegaze torch-bearers My Bloody Valentine (not so much) and the Cocteau Twins (quite a bit).

“If that’s what people are hearing, I’m not gonna argue — to be connected to bands like that is great,” says Curtis, whose trio hits town Saturday to open for M83 at the Music Box @ Fonda. “There is a lot of echoey and ambient qualities, but I think if you really look at the music, harmonically it’s more complex.”

How those complexities took shape, though, is revealing.

“The writing process was something we really bonded over — a lot of bands arrive at their sound first and the lyrics are kind of an afterthought. Our idea was to kind of flip it; our lyrics are written first,” Curtis says. “The idea that Ally had about a way to write — to write about things that happen to you from another perspective, to have a conversation with yourself that’s happening inside your own brain.”

Those conversations, iterated in ethereal harmonies delivered by the striking Deheza twins, are SVIIB’s selling point, which is part of the reason the band is touring as a three-piece after experimenting with four- and five-member lineups. “We’ve had a stronger reaction when there’s just three of us onstage,” Curtis says. “Chemistry supersedes a lot of what happens in a live band, and at the moment we’e happy with a streamlined approach. … And it’s really all about Ally and Claudia singing.”

||| Live: School of Seven Bells opens for M83 on Saturday at the Music Box @ Fonda.

||| Download: “Connjurr” or stream the dreamy track “Half Asleep” at RCRDLBL.com.