myspace.com/iamthedotmusic
download EP at high-quality for $1 or more
download EP at low-quality for free
Listen:
I Am The Dot - Double Vision
Zach Tipton of I Am The Dot, a self-proclaimed "apocalypse pop" solo-project, encourages listeners to play the Rare Creatures EP with headphones. Headphones make a song more personal; they are a conversation between the left and the right, in which the mind is the only entity that could possibly intervene. Headphones, in a way, are a perfect vulnerability. Between headphones, Tipton knowingly lays on the table three songs about rare circumstances, rare hurt, rare promise.
Each song is the chilling retelling of an unbelievable but true story: a man hit by both atomic bombs ("Double Vision"), a woman who escaped jail through an underground tunnel to unite with a forbidden love ("Tunnel of Love"), a man who survived seven lightning strikes only to commit suicide when a woman refused to be with him ("Struck").
They are stories of love wrought with suffering and suffering assuaged by the hope of love. Tipton's deft, expansive production and hazy lyrics whisper and howl these stories like dares traded by the spirits of the characters. Through headphones they wash over--with all of their irony, all of their dark optimism--and wrap the listener in a hushed schizophrenic capture.
It's mind-boggling that all of these stories truly happened, but there are even bigger truths tucked into these tracks. And that Tipton not only dug up these stories but presents them with a perfect balance of urgency sans imposition is what makes this project even more astonishing.
To read the stories behind the songs in Zach Tipton's words, read here.