The Fat Angel Sings

Plenty of bands have long histories, forged from bonds of friendship formed in a distant childhood past. Shared upbringings, shared surroundings — these can provide good raw material for a couple artists to come together and define their identity within and against the rest of the world. In the case of Isaac deBroux-Slone and Raina Bock, the duo behind Disq, those roots go way back. In fact, the two met when they were still babies.

For a while, she and deBroux-Slone were more like family friends, seeing each other on holidays and such. As they approached their teenage years, it became clear that their musical interests and ambitions didn’t line up with a lot of their peers. So they began playing together and set off to establish their name in the local scene in Madison, Wisconsin.

As it turns out, that origin story doesn’t start all that long ago. Neither deBroux-Slone nor Bock is yet 20 years old. The two of them work on Disq music together, with deBroux-Slone serving as frontman and often bringing in the skeletons of the songs; live, Bock plays bass in a band that’s now grown to members onstage. Over the last couple of years, they’ve been expanding their songwriting range and gradually garnering attention around the States. Bock focused on the latter, attending music camps and workshops from a young age but quickly discovering she didn’t have much of a taste for technical traditions and theory. Meanwhile, deBroux-Slone taught himself to produce in his mom’s basement, using demo software given to him by his father, who used to run a theater in Madison.

Disq’s new sound was evident on two recent singles, “Communication” and “Parallel.” The tracks were released as part of Saddle Creek’s Document series, Compared to the reverb- and effects-laden sounds of Disq I, “Communication” and “Parallel” are more of a hint at where deBroux-Slone and Bock are now as songwriters. The former begins as a fizzy alt-rock jam that eventually bursts into a plaintive chorus grappling with the inherent distance between us even as try to relate to one another. “Parallel” carried their older aesthetic forward, a blooming psych-rock track in which deBroux-Slone’s sunny vocals are underpinned by more ragged instrumentation than in the past.

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