We music nerds love to talk about "music scenes", the concept that a band's geography will influence it's sound. Typically I believe that it more of a cross pollination thing: bands playing shows and sharing rehearsal spaces, they end up influencing each other and it leaves sort of a musical paper trail. I believe it's a special occasion when the actual physical surroundings effect and influence the abstract patterns of sound that make up a bands output.
In 1996 I was nose deep in the first wave of emo bands and I scoured fanzines looking for releases that fit into that description. I used to carry sketchbooks around with me. I filled them regularly in a pre-cell phone distracted life. Often I would jot down notes in them and even more often I would jot down band names and releases I would discover in fanzines, hear at friends houses or see on a t-shirt worn by someone who appeared cooler than me. #boyslife and their second album "departures and landfalls" was in one and I was able to find it at my favorite indie record store. It's a sprawling, meandering album sprinkled with field recordings and angular bursts of music. It feels like the open Midwest expanses from whist the band sprouted from. Nothing on the album is polished, it all seems to have a film of soil dust on it, an earthy open air musical feel. I've always thought that effect coupled with a very fitting album cover was almost magical in its ability to convey a landscape. It's not a quick listen album, it's a skipping stones in a pond kind of experiense: the ripples mesmerize amongst the sounds of nature. It's a great album.
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