Cold Court

It’s tempting to say that you’ve never heard music quite like what Philadelphia group Cold Court is doing on their debut EP, but that’s not quite right. You’ve probably heard a lot of music that sounds like this. You just haven’t heard it all at once. Sideways rhythms, approximations of salsa, peg-legged shuffles, grungy little garage rock riffs, organ runs from the feathered-hair era, The Mars Volta, that proggy one-hit wonders Focus, Death Grips, glitchy Aphex Twin filters, radio emo, splashy jazz drums à la Elvin Jones, uncomfortable time signatures, dubstep-style rhythmic interventions. And that’s just in the first song. Cold Court is the project of siblings Mini Serrano (she/her) and Jojo Lavina-Maldonado (he/him). Since making their debut in the Philly DIY scene as no-wave noisemakers, the co-songwriters/producers developed a remarkably idiosyncratic style that flaunts its influences and demolishes even the most open- minded listener’s hierarchies of taste. Think Bitches Brew shouldn’t be within a hundred miles of Justice? Think again. Their debut EP \ (^_^) / (aka: HANDS UP) can feel a bit like tumbling through your internet service provider’s coaxial cable, an overwhelming spree of information and input that’s held together by tight, compact energy and the siblings’ confidence in their own taste. As Jojo reflects, “We grew up on Skrillex and 100 Gecs. It’s hard for me to think that something like Skrillex could be less valuable or less intellectual than something like Talking Heads. For me, it was intentional to emphasize the contradictions that exist in genres.” This approach makes HANDS UP feel hyperkinetic, as if it’s just sprung from a compact enclosure. Their precision and intensity have made them one of Philadelphia’s most exciting young bands and landed them opening slots with musically likeminded bands such as black midi, Geese, and Deerhoof. The songs here have been carefully assembled, the product of two siblings trying to one-up each other while emailing demos and back and forth. “Somehow we would surprise each other every time we would have a new mix,” notes Mini. “I would approach it like I was trying to impress Jojo, or trying to do something that would surprise him.” You can hear this all over the EP, in the way that the songs seem to constantly be cresting, build after build of melody and rhythm powered by scribbling guitar and percussion that snaps like a drum corps on a dead sprint. “When we’re together, we’re just chasing whatever feels good,” explains Jojo. “Mini and I always know when there’s something there, even if it’s something that no one else would understand.” Their willingness to follow their own weird impulses was nurtured by the bands they were seeing when Jojo left their New Jersey home to go to college at Drexel University in Philadelphia. They went to house shows and saw bands with unusual instrumentation, people with weird hair and fucked-up clothes. “It changed my life, the way that it was a place that you could be yourself—you could be anything,” reflects Mini. “We knew as long as we fully show up as ourselves, we know that people will get into it. We had a violinist; we had a percussion player; we had a synth player and saxophonist.” While their sound has evolved since those heady early days, Cold Court’s ethos centers around setting expectations of who they are and what they might do, then defying them. Maybe it has something to do with identity and the ways some might assume a band with two people of color–including a trans singer in Mini–should sound. But it has more to do with their artistic identity and the ways in which growing up in the 21st century, with the entirety of music history ready to be absorbed, can shape the taste and personality of anyone curious enough to lose themselves within it from an early age. Opener “Nina” might acclimate you to the idea that this EP is maximalist in the extreme, but its particular formulation of that maximalism gives way almost immediately. In “Burn,” Mini buries her voice in gravelly digital noise while the band curls and twists the circuit-bent verses into a dance-punk chorus ripped straight from the Lower East Side ca. 2002. The scuds and drones of “Cola” nod toward the warped industrial pop of HEALTH, while “Eighty1” feels like a mid-2010s indie pop or retro funk hit, at least until you notice the guitar that seems to be playing both afrobeat and post-punk at the same time while pulling the song forward. You enter HANDS UP thinking Cold Court are a prog-influenced noise band; you leave it thinking they might have a Top 40 hit in them. What matters to Jojo and Mini is that they’re both of these things and much more all at once. “We go through these spaces so quickly, and we’re very obsessive people,” says Mini. “When we like something we love hyping it up like it’s the best thing ever.” Ultimately, what makes Cold Court’s music hold together is the logic of enthusiasm, the sense you can feel of the band juicing themselves up as they work through idea after idea. “When we’re together, it’s like we’re just chasing whatever feels good,” Jojo says. What you hear on HANDS UP is the rush as they sprint by in search of even more.