Eel Sparkles is the seventh release by Human Potential – the solo project of Andrew Becker, an award-winning filmmaker and former drummer for both Dischord Records’ band, Medications, and Brooklyn provocateurs, Screens. The album is set to be released on March 6. You can pre-order the album here.
In spring of 2025, Becker crammed a Tascam 488 and a Mark Shippy signature balalaika into his vintage Givenchy bindle and set sail for the rugged steppes of Inner Mongolia. There, he hoped to track down and solicit the tutelage of legendary baritone Ariunbataar Ganbaatar and thus, transmogrify the foundational gain of his sonic effluvium.
But, just days into the journey, the vessel he was aboard was hijacked by a revolutionary group led by the wayward son of Larry Drake. For days, the crew and passengers were forced to watch 70mm prints of “Dr. Giggles” while consuming only fermented horse milk and Teddy Grahams dipped in ham salad. Eventually, after deciding another form of entertainment was needed, Drake Jr. conscripted Becker into performing not only live-improvised “Giggles” scores but also rigorous performances during daily meals.
After the hostages were liberated by surviving members of the Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior incident, Becker found himself back in his Los Angeles kutcha, armed with an array of new ideas that he would engineer into Eel Sparkles.
As we anxiously await the release of Becker’s conceptual giant, the artist gifts us with the lead single, “The Sightseer.” The psychedelic pop journey of a tune blends the rawness of longing for someone and morphs it into a sonic carnival of blaring brass, distant vocals, and off-kilter melodies. There is a quaintness in this cacophony that begins to tell of the magic Becker brings to his solo material, although this new single feels bigger than himself and the listener alike. His vocals bellow out of the distance with such great force that they break through the chugging guitar riffs and wonky percussion, creating otherworldly, palpable textures. More akin to a writer using vivid imagery to depict a scene, Becker uses his subtle sonic maneuvers to emphasize his poetic lyrics, creating immersive alt-pop for all of your senses. “The Sightseer” is just a preview of Becker’s upcoming LP, and it should be more than enough to have listeners excited for this release.
“This song imagines a Michael Bay production of a film that poses the heretofore unconceived, never answered, and potentially inconsequential question, ‘What if Paul Bowles had Instagram?’,” explains Becker. “Without getting too fastidious, the conceit loosely correlates to a Marshall McLuhan quote I read some time ago: One of the many flips of our time is that the electric information environment returns man to the condition of the most primitive prober and hunter. Privacy invasion is now one of our biggest knowledge industries.”
