How We Stayed Individuated
An associative journey into the world of the heavy, hooky, hypnotising guitar riff. Protomartyr, “Uncle Mother’s”, from Agent Intellect, 2015 This intricate song marks the point where the Detroit band’s album metamorphoses into a weird and truly wonderful creature. Fittingly, the riff itself undergoes various transmutations, as if intent on presenting the plentiful array of […]
Soon: Shojo Winter
Like an underwater explosion, Shojo Winter’s latest EP “Somewhere Else” sends out oddly muffled shockwaves that alter the resonant space between our ears. The record starts and ends with two beautifully abstract puddles of sound, bookending four deceptively melodic songs whose sound is refracted, reverberated, expanded and modulated. It takes time to get your bearings […]
Bassless
To the horror of bass players everywhere, some bands just do without one. I’m not thinking at the moment of the increasingly popular guitar-and-drums duo format, whose sound is already stripped-down and somewhat experimental to begin with, and which probably deserves a post of its own. I’m thinking rather of bands that do seem to […]
Soon: The Cherry Wave
The formula sounds simple: “I’d fill each track with a few layers of noise, then write a song to play under the noise.” This is how Paul, The Cherry Wave’s vocalist/guitarist, describes his early song writing efforts. Nothing much seems to have changed: the typical Cherry Wave song still consists of a really melodic riff […]