IQU: Sun Q

The latest record from Seattle duo IQU opens up with sunny brilliance. It is fitting that the first song is entitled “Under the Cherry Blossom”, because the song itself opens like a flower, wooing the ear with an intricate soundscape of shimmery bleeps and blips, then emerging full bloom with a haunting theramin melody whose repetition grows in intensity until the song’s graceful finish. It’s the kind of sweet instrumental concoction so pretty as to be almost cloying to the ear, but the combination of disparate elements is so expert and so unique that there is simply no choice but to be drawn into the song’s dreamy atmosphere. But IQU has always been a band that has known how to lay on the charm. By consistently churning out smart electronic melodies, band members Michiko Swiggs and Kento Oiwa cleverly managed to avoid the trap of predictability that can potentially ensnare similarly outfitted acts.

The band (which originally went by the moniker ICU) built a reputation for themselves in the Northwest scene by playing fun, inventive, and sometimes kitschy electronic music with a notable Japanese twist, a few years before the dominance of electroclash caused everyone and their grandmother to turn their music dials to digitized pop. The band was a three-piece in its inception, with bassist Aaron Hartman rounding out Oiwa’s turntable, guitar and virtuoso theramin skills and Swigg’s keyboards and vocals. Playing live parties and shows billed with similarly-minded northwest acts like FCS North, and Mouse on Mars, the band built their popularity playing live before making their full-length debut with 1998’s Chotto Matte a Moment!, released by K Records. Produced with care by the venerable Calvin Johnson, the record was a lo-fi masterpiece that brought in the band’s music to a new audience. Despite the odd distraction of an off-putting collaboration with quirky experimental artist Miranda July, IQU seemed to build steadily in skill and imagination. Their second full-length record, Teenage Dream, released in 2000, deviated from their original formula by inviting a number of bands such as Stuart Townsend’s Looper project and Lexaundculpt to remix their song “Teenage Dream” in individual ways. Though it did not feature original material, Teenage Dream had moments of brilliance, blending stand-up bass, whimsical Japanese samples, machine beats, and droning guitars to good effect.

After Teenage Dream however, the band seemed to recede into the background for a couple of years. Hartman left the group to play with fellow Olympia band Old Time Relijun, and Oiwa and Swiggs put the band aside for a while in order to pursue their respective individual interests and side projects. Though it took them nearly four years to get together enough material to release a full-length, it seems that this time was well-spent. Sun Q reveals a pop sensibility that the band has shown in the past, but never exploited to the extent that they do on this record. Elements of disco, funk, electro-pop, and rock all combine to make this one of the most interesting electronic dance efforts to come out in quite a while. Indeed, for all of its overt gorgeousness, opener “Under the Cherry Blossom” is the only track on the record that does not beg you to shake your ass. Songs like the “Dirty Boy” (also recently released on its own as 12-inch single by Sonic Boom) are unabashedly user-friendly, held down by catchy electronic beats interspersed with energetic samples and rhythmic vocal repetitions.

But like fellow indie / electro act Enon, the band manages to make even their most sugary pop confections sound somehow refined, tempering the flirty “party-time” opening samples with hyper-distorted guitar riffs. As with songs on their previous albums, the lyrics are firmly rooted in the sweet and simple, occasionally giving away to the cutesy. But put in the context of such simple yet undeniably danceable packaging, Swigg’s layered refrain of “I will love you today / If you will love you tomorrow” seems perfectly sweet, if not profound. The more insistent keyboard beats of “Hamachi” are equally engaging, veering almost into something like a rock song, and the distorted sushi-themed lyrics reveal that the band privileges sense of humor right up there with booty-shaking in the order of priority.