During the climactic final scene of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Brad Fiedel's moody, pummeling synth score turns tender as industrial sounds clang in the background. That melody is as seared into viewers' memory as the scene itself. So it's hard to shake that melody from the first half of Good Willsmith's "What Goes In The Ocean Goes In You," which is centered on a modal, minor key as synths whir to life around it.
Good Willsmith builds itself on structured improvisation; it's deftly displayed in the Chicago band's stellar live performances, in which Natalie Chami, Max Allison and Doug Kaplan demonstrate fluid and frightening chemistry. Their touchstones are in drone, noise and the occasional metallic nod, yet the results are always holistically psychedelic. Recorded live with no overdubs, Things Our Bodies Used To Have refines the trio's landscape in suites — reflective yet measured one moment, sublime and wrecked the next. "What Goes In The Ocean Goes In You" achieves both as the back half descends into euphoric casino clatter, found spoken-word samples, and Chami's otherworldly looped vocals, which always seem to find the beat of the next revolution.
Things Our Bodies Used To Have comes out now on Umor Rex.
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