Every week, Milwaukee Music Premiere connects the city’s artists with our listening audience. If you’re an artist with a track you’d like us to debut exclusively on Radio Milwaukee, head over to our Music Submission page to learn how.
Many questions come to mind when you receive a Milwaukee Music Premiere submission from a group calling themselves “Pretendacle.” Is it not a real tentacle? Is it someone’s imagination wrapping itself around you, like a giant squid taking down the Nautilus? Is it just a made-up word someone in the band thought sounded cool?
After listening to “Atlas” — the song from Pretendacle making its debut today — the second option seems to fit best, because this is a track that curls around you in a manner that makes its intentions difficult to discern. It doesn’t seem to be trying to comfort or crush. It just sort of holds you there as the prog-iness does its thing.
There’s a lot of prog to go around, too. Brothers Jason and Adam Braatz — who form the band’s core along with Rae Prettyman (vocals) and Ben Piette (drums) — weren’t kidding when they told us “Atlas” is a “keyboard-driven tour de force.” Adam absolutely goes to work on the keys from moment one and applies an 8-bit flavor that stays true to the siblings’ affection for throwback gaming sounds. It’s easy to imagine the song playing behind a boss bottle in some dank and drippy corner of Hyrule, with Prettyman delivering lyrics that match the sinister vibe:
I had a dream a bird was dying
Its feathers had shed away
Because it refused to eat its young
Darkened fish had a giant eye
And a socket
Swam alone, completely unaware
We would watch until it died
As the band explained to us, “The song emerged during a period of profound uncertainty for Adam, marked by a series of strange events and vivid recurring dreams that left him with a deep sense of unease. Amid this turmoil came inspiration, resulting in the song's signature odd-metered hook. The music cycles through several time signature and key changes, reflecting Adam's feelings of disruption, before ultimately returning to the original key.
“The sense of resolution is fleeting, however, as the song concludes on an unresolved, dissonant chord.”
It doesn’t leave you with the warm and fuzzies, but it is an appropriate finish considering all that came before. The themes are complex, as is the composition (besides the keys, take note of the wild percussion from Piette and guest drummer Blake Ritterman). You can hear it all using the player at the top of the page and on 88Nine throughout the day (7:30 and 11:30 a.m.; 3:30, 7:30 and 10:30 p.m.). “Atlas” will also appear on Pretendacle’s upcoming four-track EP expected to drop in early 2025.
