Daiana Feuer on November 11th, 2016

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Whether performing in total darkness at Hyperion Tavern or providing the soundtrack to a silent film (as they have for Murnau’s “Sunrise” at Cinefamily and HM157), Rococo Jet crafts haunted lullabies that free the mind from its flesh and launch it on an intergalactic journey. Nora Keyes and Jimi Cabeza de Vaca started Rococo Jet, in some ways to continue the legacy of Keyes’ previous band Fancy Space People; though let’s not forget to mention her earlier band the Centimeters in the Keyes chronology. Where FSP was like cosmic Black Sabbath fronted by a witchy alien woman, Rococo Jet zooms in one particular metaphysical frequency, something that Keyes and Cabeza De Vaca seem to understand  and communicate in their own private language, perhaps just by swatting a ball of yarn across the floor to each other like cats. They have expanded to include violinist Rebecca Lynn, and their first full-length album, “Mysterium Tremens,” just released by Folktale Records, includes John Perreira, Mitchell Brown and Jack Name. Engineering the record at Mad Hattie’s Studios, Keyes took multi-track compositions by Jimi Cabeza De Vaca and collaged them together with improvisations by these other musicians to create layered hallucinatory soundscapes, which she describes as “harmonic mesmerization as dimensional keys to free entrapped selves.” It’s like that game where someone cracks an imaginary egg on your head and you really feel the yolk dripping down.

||| Listen: “Dream Party”