Sometime last December, Bear in Heaven began an experiment of publicity-stunt proportions. The Brooklyn band uploaded a copy of I Love You, It's Cool, its latest album, to its site for an automatic and continuous stream. No biggie there — until you find out that BIH slowed down the stream to the point that the site version is 400,000 percent longer than the actual record, which means the whole thing will be played only once until its release on April 3.
Seeing as seconds of the album are elongated to fill hours, you don't get to hear what I Love You really sounds like, but that's very much the point. The slowed album comes off like thoughtful Ambient/Drone that sounds more like the shifting of the cosmos than BIH's actual music.
Still, if anyone can try to grab interest with something this art-schoolish, why not Bear in Heaven? After all, this is a band that once listed Talk Talk, Nicodemus, Bernard Parmegiani, R. Kelly and Lungfish as influences on their MySpace page (remember those?).
Bear in Heaven's last full-length, 2009's Beast Rest Forth Mouth, unified Dance music, Indie Pop, Prog Rock, Experimental music and other genres into one strange quilt. The odds are good that I Love You will also be a charming, multi-flavored thing … at normal speed, of course.
BEAR IN HEAVEN performs Saturday, March 31 at MOTR Pub with guests Young Magic and Doldrums. Buy tickets, check out performance times and get venue details here.
