Gone

Gone is the first new studio album from Pong in four years. Emerging from the ashes of seminal Austin band Ed Hall in the late '90s, the new act eschewed Ed Hall's post-punk guitar excesses and turned their collective ear in a rhythmic, almost pop direction, Pong emerged as a whole new musical animal; a mighty retro-futuristic fusion of melody, beat, lights, and vocal effects. Talk boxes and banks of keyboards supplanted the traditional rock instruments audiences had come to expect, and dance floors began to give under the weight of ass-shaking punk rockers rediscovering their inner groove, reveling in the mix of electronics, punk, post-punk, hip hop, and humor. Embracing and paraphrasing classic rock convention with a side of rave histrionics for a post-rock world, Pong established themselves as a world of fun in a generally all-too-serious Austin music scene. Gone represents the next step in Pong's musical evolution; seven songs that blur the lines between a number of different genres to construct what might best be described as dance music from another dimension or pop music from an alternate universe.