Reviews
Room 204 is an instrumental noise-rock duo from Nantes. 14 minutes. 8 songs. Each song is so packed, it becomes journey where time has no meaning.. maybe content-wise this feels more like 2 hours of music. Or maybe I’d put it like this: It plays really well on nonstop repeat. Shellac should listen to this record. Albini would want the cover signed.
So after spending a good month with this album, I’ve grown younger, wiser and happier.
Room 204 - Balloons
Kythibong, 2010
Apparently a little 6-man band from Connecticut made a self-released EP last June, put it on bandcamp for free and pressed 100 copies, that deserve selling out.
The sound is tight at times and shows off a big, but well-timed and balanced group, at other times a bit more like a jazz-jam. They sound similar to their contemporaries from Antarctic and Enemies and their predecessors in Pele, embracing a light-weight sound with charismatic, playful instrumentation. The cool new thing about Fugue, is that they have a broader palette of instruments than most bands in this genre, where often the most appreciated skill is to get the more out of lesser instruments and band members.
It’s 17 minutes packed with driving melodies and explosive outbursts, but nonetheless doesn’t seem too calculated, as they embrace enough genres to be both entertaining and emotive.
Fugue - Ancient Glass EP
self-released, 2009
I was actually ordering the new Imperial China when I thought about making something from the shipping costs in the Socket Records store. So I picked up bldngs’ debut EP and that should not go unnoticed! The sound is happy, trippy, techie, instrumental.. awarding patience with the same amount of freaky, joyous eruptions.
Here they are playing some stuff they wrote after the EP…
Btw… Bth Pttrns nd bldngs rmvd thr vwls nd thy bth snd grt! S th cnnctn?
buidings - endless (EP)
Socket Records (Washington DC), Summer 2009
Sorry that I’m late with this… PTTRNS are from Cologne and have had a few songs out on a 7″, 2 splits and 2 casettes. Their sound is a musical alloy best described as DC post-hardcore, funkier and more fluent than for instance Q and Not U ever were, even on “Power”. And a bit out of time, akin Pit Er Pat. I heard the 3 tracks from People I Adore 7″… it was promising.. didn’t totally catch me, but nonetheless I found myself putting it on once in a while for a year or so.. and after putting PTTRNS into rotation again, I decided that they must’ve released something new by now. The band was doing small releases for 32 months before finally releasing Science Piñata this April. I’m still waiting to hear all of it, but whatever… I trust what I’ve heard.
Long time no speak. But not for no reason: we just finished mixing our LP with the awesome Guido Lucas at Blubox Studios. It‘s really good. It‘s called SCIENCE PIÑATA and it will be out on Altin Village & Mine Records on April 1st. Recording was difficult and tiresome - Benjamin and Daniel both fell ill in the process so we had to get Sting to lay down some bass and that guy from Arctic Monkeys to play the remaining drum parts. However, Guido is a wizard and edited it all. You probably won‘t be able to tell the difference. Get into it!
PTTRNS - Science Piñata
Altin Village & Ursa Major, April, 2010
Here’s a mention that qualifies for 2009’s best release… i’ve been sitting on it for a little too long, but just the more to ensure that this is a masterpiece durable for long term exposure and health benefits.
Antarctic’s debut was a long process, already anticipated more than a 1½ year ago when their music was only available as 4 demo tracks on myspace… and calling them demo tracks immediately set the bar high.
The album is a continuous flow of creative guitar and bass work and firm, lap-tapping delicious, tricky drumming. It crosses borders of genres just the way we like it, but without ever sounding unnatural or pretentious. It’s a joy to go hunting for details in. For instance how almost every of the 9 tracks flow seamlessly together: I’m sure it’s something that they’ve been working a lot with, so I’ll give them an ad hoc pinnacle delicious sound award® for that.
Antarctic - s/t
Hello Sir, 2009
We vs. Death (NL) just went on a little eurotour. At the end of it I saw them in Berlin. One-word review: Stunning.
They’re a 5-piece playing almost entirely in minor. It’s in the sentimental line of post-rock - but there’s enough musical creativity to engage, and more than anything, it works in a live setting. The lyrics are sparse, the trumpet is eerie, but it’s fitted as a perfect counter-balance to a heavy and dense foundation.
We vs. Death - A Black House, A Coloured Home
Beep! Beep!, 2009
Hey you! Get you speakers out! It’s time for some Airpeople! And it’s time for me to admit that 9/10 bands on this blog have no singers… jolly brilliant, if you ask me.
The Golden City is their debut and a soothing collection of 9 varied instrumental rock tracks. What I think Airpeople does well (besides from reminding me of FMTM) is their catchy surface combined with a post-rockish layering of guitars… without degrading themselves to the daunting, cliché post-rock buildups, that is. Instead, most of the tracks are kept on the lighter, refreshing and positive side - like sharing the energy and dynamics of team spirit and combined, creative minds. Or as Flo from the band says:
When we started with Airpeople we had a rough idea of the creative process, not so much of the way it should sound. A focus or the idea behind Airpeople is to experiment with all kinds of styles and to create music thats exciting for us to play. We’ve known each other for a long time before Airpeople, love to play music and trying new things keeps it interesting and fun. There are so many things you can try and we like to take our time for that. So far we never had a clear picture of the song before we started working on something new. Sometimes there is a vague idea for the atmosphere, everybody plays what he likes and then we see how the pieces can become a song. In the end the song can be very different from the original idea.
Visit their site and have a listen to the first track of the album. And no, the oil drums aren’t real.
Airpeople - The Golden City
Golden Antenna, September 2009
Ever tired of Monads? I am. I know a lot of people who are. In computer science this is like highlight of all frustrations. An IO Monad is (said in a humane way) something that can contain your logics separated from actual input/output. It’s something that enables you to abstract from the side-effects of communication, so it won’t poison your reasoning. And this makes perfect sense: Say you’re a band, and you have your own reasoning about music. Why care about the side-effects?
For Io Monade Stanca there seems to be a logic that music is worth the intuition it can distract and dismantle. It sounds like Shellac and June of 44, for sure dusty. Unlike their old influences they play with a sort of confused/confusing orientation towards noise rock. The band is fully in sync about their mission, yet sounding like something in chaos and without an aim. It’s a technical fascination to listen to, but at the same time played at a slow pace. Maybe I’m as insane as the music, but I’ve been listening a lot to this in the background of my work. It’s like fragments pieced together, resembling what music might be in my subconsciousness.
And like the previous review, I’ll leave you with a link, so you can procrastinate about something the band happened to mention in a song title.
Io Monade Stanca - The Impossible Story of Bubu
Africantape, October 2009
I cannot overlook the fact of a new Bats album. Finally. I receive it with all guards down, expecting something fun, technical and well… entertaining. And here it is: Exactly how I pictured it and a natural extension to the old EP. Delivered at ripping speeds and with little regards to genres. What’s so fascinating about BATS is the natural blend of danceable, mathy and heavy, a medicine against boredom, an energy that’s transferable directly from speakers to body. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta. Someone certainly chose a scientific theme for this. Star Wormwood? Mythological, too. Getting to grips with a main theme for the album or even understanding basic parts of the texts is a challenge, but maybe also a wake-up call. Is it okay to listen to something you perfectly don’t have a clue about the ideas of? Is it okay to listen to the opposite? And how about the most noble ideas in modern science - to label them geek-classified and move on is just a shame. No, let’s put music on them. The album comes with a text-book, so once I’m done grooving out, I’ll check the texts. A few links…
BATS - Red In Tooth And Claw
Richter Collective, August 2009
Alright… this was mentioned in an earlier post, but new instrumental band on Hello Sir released their 30 minute debut last month! Hurray! It’s a duo consisting of guitar player Adam Joyce and drummer/keyboardist Brennan O’Brien, and judging from youtube, they look pretty cool live.. with or without the local drunken douchebag crowd. Being a duo, the sound could of course lack something, but TBC uses their setup to the optimal effect, special features being multitudes of lightly strummed, layered guitars, intoxicating shifts in volume and loads of reverb.. all done very coherently. You could easily draw a parallel to the initial two-man outfit of Russian Circles, that managed to bring about some of the hardest-hitting, super-focused, technical post-rock I’ve ever heard. TBC is much less metallic and mathy, though, but they manage just as well as Russian Circles to create a sound that reveals some impressive results when played at adequate volumes. This is both due to skilled, clear production and even more so, the intelligent structure of layers and the sonic spaces they each operate in.
The tracks on I’m The Spring are all quite post-rockish in the traditional sense: Instrumental, guitar, outbursts, buildups, slow-downs. But nowadays when these old methods don’t really work, and I find myself yawning at Mogwai, it’s quite a relief to see them used in a new setting, with shorter tracks and thus more compact excitement. On a few occasions TBC do slow down quite a lot, but it certainly doesn’t ruin the album and seems more of a natural break in the flow of the album than a cheap sentimental trick. Check out the opening track of the album below.. some of the best stuff I’ve heard this year…
Underpass Sunrise:
The Bronzed Chorus - I'm The Spring
Hello Sir, April 2009
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