Kevin Bronson on October 21st, 2013

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Technology marches on, and in its slipstream songwriters’ sometimes-quixotic quest to marry traditional instrumentation with synthetic sounds. The debut EP from Savio Savio (available as a free download here) takes that challenge into heady territory. Savio Savio is the brainchild of Ray Suen, the classically trained violinist and multi-instrumentalist who is one of the most in-demand players in town, having been a member or touring member of Mariachi El Bronx, Childish Gambino, the Killers, Flaming Lips, Louis IV and probably a dozen more bands whose name elude us. You want sonic layers? Savio Savio piles it on – as Suen acknowledges, “I’m eschewing minimalism and going for more is more.” So on songs such as “Killer” and “Ghost,” you find vocoded vocals atop one another, strings colliding with mellotron and electro beats meshing with live drums (played by Amy Wood of The Donnies The Amys, et al). Psychedelic disco, meet disco psychedelia. Suen says he already has EP2 in the works; in the meantime, remixers will have fun with this. In fact, Big Black Delta already has.

||| Stream: “Ghost” and “Killer”

||| Also: Stream the Big Black Delta remix of “Ghost”