The opening of “Happiness” by
Millennium Resorts has a strange sort of calm, epic, low-fi vibe, like the soundtrack to an 8-bit space opera that’s as eerie as it is grand in scale. Then comes the bass, the snare, the jazzy echoing synth, and the lyrics that fall somewhere between shoegaze and the sleepy kind of pop that plays on the commuter bus at 1 am. It wakes you up, though, a deep-ear whisper that wants to be heard but isn’t insistent about being understood right away. Then, somehow, it gets loud without being boisterous. It’s like Pink Floyd echoing in a space capsule as it breaks the atmosphere.
In the press release for their single,
Millennium Resorts called their own music a “mind-bending sonic mosaic” that is “monolithic in its presence and rich with atmosphere.” The single, “Happiness,” is the second track on their debut album, “In The Key of David,” which they hope that you’ll listen to in a single sitting, in the middle of the night, in a dark, quiet room. You’re supposed to take a break at “intermission” for fresh air and refill on your “favorite vice.”
“There are several musical themes that intertwine and call back to each other, developing through the album all the way up to the end,” says the musical duo. “One of the most important aspects of ‘In the Key of David’ is that it is meant to be listened to from front to back. The album was composed and executed as an album. It was never just a song here and there. It was completely outlined before the production started.”
The musical duo behind
Millennium Resorts, Scott Raulie and Jonathan Richerson, bonded over their inspirational bands: Radiohead, Pink Floyd, The Mars Volta, and My Bloody Valentine. They loved synth-wave vibes and aimed to create a dreampop-synth-wave blend that was more ambitious, epic, and memorable than the music they admired.
“We also wanted to put the guitar solo back on the map,” they say. “The album has some pretty meaty, lengthy solos, but we hope guitar fans will appreciate them.”
Planning out the album, they took inspiration from how they might write a screenplay. They outlined the album from start to finish, giving it a beginning, a middle, an end, and an intermission in the middle. “Ever since I saw my first Stanley Kubrick film, and there was an intermission,” they say, “I just always thought that was cool.”
“It really is the old idiom that the sum is greater than the parts,” they say. “As far as the themes and the ‘story’ of ‘The Key of David,’ I know it’s a copout, but that’s up to the listener. No doubt we will get comparisons to cyberpunk and mentions of ‘dystopian themes,’ which I think is fair, but this goes way beyond computers and robots. But again, we’ll let the listener interpret.”
Millennium Resorts is based in Austin, TX, and is a new musical sound that fans of the strange and unique, or just the classically psychedelic, will want to keep an eye on. With less than six thousand monthly listeners on Spotify
here at the time of this writing, this is the moment to listen to the beginning of a musical story that could become very special.
