High Places

High Places is mash-up music without the calculated sheen, the seamlessness, and the wink-wink song titles. It’s multi-instrumentalist Rob Barber accessing the databases of NASA’s unmanned interplanetary spacecraft and uploading the recorded cosmic curio: glitchy bleeps and borps and bips. It’s vocalist Mary Pearson high-noting from dizzying summits and turning in pinched performances from the dales below. It’s these distinct components—the sonic pastiche, the varied vocals—dovetailed together. Barber’s aesthetic evokes Brian Eno. He creates his soundscapes with 12-string guitars, banjos, rattles, wooden blocks and mixing bowls. The emphasis isn’t on passion and melody, but on chance: how each tiny musical event sounds when it randomly interacts with another. Barber’s production also involves basic effects processors, so tracks like “Vision’s the First …” and “From Stardust to Sentience” are bumper-car chaotic, yet conciliatory. Meanwhile, Pearson cultivates an air of detachment. On “A Field Guide,” her heart rate dips to hibernation levels as an up-tempo beat compels (and fails) her to dance. “The Storm” is Pearson lying supine in bed, the song’s instrumentation a mobile fashioned from carburetor and alarm-clock parts spinning above her. It’s one of the few moments the bi-polar duo is on the same page.