SILICONE PRAIRIE – Volume II

Ever since releasing ‘My Life on the Silicone Prairie Vol. I’ in 2021, Ian Teeple has been riding a creative high. Whether you’ve noticed his incredible visual art, witnessed the cathartic Silicone Prairie live band, or know Ian as the newest member of Snõõper – his driving, free-spirited energy abounds. Silicone Prairie have transcended landlocked guitar punk/jangle into new realms on Vol. II. The album manages to color outside the lines of genre, blurring worlds of sound together beautifully. Cloudy bedroom pop tangles with fields of flute, warbled tape editing, thick fuzzed guitars, and a sage sense of introversion. ‘My Life on the Silicone Prairie Vol. II’ is a deeply personal, ethereal ride through the mind of Ian Teeple, joined by friends from Kansas City and abroad. “You can’t really listen to Silicone Prairie on record without noticing the laborious production and limber musicianship. Take for one, the way organized horns and muffled jungle beast roars harmoniously make themselves adjacent. Or the polarity of the bass and guitar, the grace of every instrument when it peeps. It has a raw edge though, the idiom and architecture does not impede the visceral, emotional content. It’s about form AND heart AND realness, the more rigorous AND open AND boiled down, the more wrenching. It communicates in introspections and outbursts. The vocal can lilt with melancholy only to turn with smug angst within a phrase. For all its forethought, the end result pends until the application of the last stroke. There is nuance and humanity in this, there is aim and aimlessness, side by side and both fully present. Like Ayers or Newell or Stamey. Like Carole King or Abba or Don Mclean in the power pop Olympics, and then closed off and difficult and foaming at the mouth. See: bittersweet folk unknowns, reprobate bedroom glammists, serpentine flight simulators, or synchronized swimmers.” – Joe Chamandy (Celluloid Lunch)