Collection: plu

While plu is technically a debut for plu as a band, it emerges out of years of gradual development on the part of bandleader pluto bell. Over the course of the past decade, pluto’s work in the Los Angeles underground experimental music scene has wavered variously from longform composition to non-idiomatic songwriting, moving between the two, sometimes ambiguously and sometimes in a clear-cut way. Over that time, they’ve built up their artistic voice alongside numerous collaborative relationships with musicians performing their work. In this framework, plu represents pluto’s most decisivedecicisive foray into the world of bands: guitars, drums, bass, vocals, songs, setlists, big amps, t-shirts… you name it, plu’s got it. 

The songs on plu were mostly developed out of home-recorded solo demos that pluto taught to (and then fleshed out with) their bandmates Jack Doutt, Leah Levinson, and Jesse Quebbeman-Turley. pluto’s tendency towards unconventional rhythms, songforms, idioms, and harmonies made this no easy task. Over the course of a year, the gradual fine-tuningfinetuning and mastering of these unusual and subtly intricate songs developed all sorts of collaborative shorthand, mutual creative understandings, and personal bonds beyond what the four musicians had already shared through years of work together. Long story short, this EP is the artifact of plu’s becoming as a b-a-n-d BAND. 

As for the songs themselves? pluto’s greatest source of inspiration is non-musical. pluto describes their process as “reading-heavy,” involving an obsessive consumption of theory that intermingles with the thoughts and events of daily life (they cite the work of authors Sianne Ngai, Sarah Ahmed, Nick Salvato, Lisa Robertson, and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui as particularly inspiring on this EP).

In their lyrics, they attempt to grapple with themes of self, social identity, and the body through what they describe as “a conglomeration of found material among personal words and entries I write on my phone.” In these short, playful tunes, they dance about the phenomenological, the existential, and the metaphysical. The result is often abstract yet vibrant, stirring contemplation in a listener via brief glimpses of intelligible thought as words peek out of dizzying compositions.

Recorded and mixed by Rob Shelton at the newly blossoming Altamira Sound studio in Los Angeles, plu is a suitable introduction to its namesake author and the band they now lead.