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06 June 2006
The Death Set, To (RabbitFoot)
A joyous burst of noise-pop exuberance, the Death Set's To packs seven punchy songs into 12 minutes of simple keyboard lines, distorted guitars, and shouted vocals. The duo has migrated from Australia to Baltimore, but their sound is straight out of the New York City avant-loft scene of Japanther and affiliates. With more energy than profundity, co-lead singer Johnny Siera's high-pitched yelping sounds like mid-'90s Bis at that band's most excited state; I had him pegged as a woman declaring, "take it from me, I'm a feminist" on "Boys/Girls" (turns out he's saying "I'm effeminate", and the song's main argument is that "if I was gay I would get more sex"; it's more stupid than offensive, but the Death Set are not staking their claim to fame on lyrical depth anyway). The art-damage factor never impedes the sharp hooks, and nice touches like the machine-gun-fire percussive interjections that punctuate the bouncy rhythms of "Snap" insure that listener attention never wanders. That this will probably be embraced by the smarmy Vice set doesn't detract from its irrepressibly frenetic charm.
[Insound]
— Whitney Strub
"Intermission": [MP3]
multiple songs: [MySpace]
Punk 
The Poles, As Above, So Below (doubleplusgood)
This EP begins and one can't help think of Girls Against Boys, Blonde Redhead, and a shot of whiskey. The dynamics on opener "Design the Fight" are predictable in their quirky way but that doesn't stop the song from being a great one. The next track, "Echoes for a Voice" follows a similar road but slows the song down, creating a powerful indie-ballad of sorts (well, the kind the Archers of Loaf would compose). From there it gets a tad confusing. "Amaze" is decent, but breaks into a Metallica thing, minus the power that makes Metallica listenable. Likewise, the next track wanders into the metal arena. This isn't so terrible (metal is cool again, right?) but it does make for an uneven release. The closer is a lovely, plaintive rock song. Perhaps as the Poles work on their forthcoming full-length, they'll find one cohesive voice to channel their songs through.
[Insound]
— Jill LaBrack
"Design the Fight": [MP3]
"Metal": [MP3]
multiple songs": [MySpace]
rock 
Speaker Junkies, Tekno Punk (acropolisRPM)
Having missed the boat with acid house and raves in fields and the likes, when I was about 15, I'd skim into town, drink as many sticky alcopops as possible and dance like a grinning, sweating loon to idiot DJ's playing glo-sticks-in-the-air trance music. It was cheesy and generic and totally irrelevant when you weren't mashed-up out of your tiny mind, but it always got packed dancefloors bouncing off the walls. The music on Speaker Junkies' second album sounds a bit like how I remember those fuzzy nights -- only some of the stuff here is actually quite good. At its best when the abrasive techno grooves spew shards from the speakers in an unrelenting assault on the dancefloor, Tekno Punk is an unashamed club record. Cuts like "Diffusion" and "Outerspace" are contagious and made solely for dark, flashing dancefloors. But therein lies the problem with Tekno Punk. Essentially a handful of premier dancefloor fillers for DJ's and live sets, over the course of a 70-minute album the music is simply mind-numbing. For the most part, deliriously free of any light and shade or textures, the album chugs on in a constant wash of mainstream techno, which surprisingly given the albums title, has no real edge. There was surely no need to include here the likes of "Leap of Faith", a song that plasters faux soulful vocals and comatose lyrics over identikit trance backing, and actually sounds just like those Saturday nights out in rotten provincial nightclubs when I was 15. And even that's better than the atrocious funfair soundtracking dross of "Give It to Me Hard". Tekno Punk unquestionably contains a number of dirty techno grooves that although generic and, whisper it, out of date, will get certain dancefloors rocking. However as an album it's seriously flawed. Techno and trance might be about as underground as the Crazy Frog but even so, the tracks on Tekno Punk frequently slide into familiar techno sheen, compounded by some lazy guest vocals and predictable flourishes. Most of this record will make no sense outside of the nightclub, and even there, parts of it would sound formulaic and slack. For all but the most dedicated, Tekno Punk is an album best avoided.
[Insound]
— Michael Lomas
"Time 2 Get Crazy": [MP3]
"The Metro": [MP3]
"Attack": [MP3]
Trance / Techno / Electronica 
Harry Hunks, 20 Miles an Hour EP (Rhythm Barrel)
Harry Hunks would be a poppy post punk-cum-country knock-off of twee British band The Boy Least Likely To if only this Scandinavian group didn't actually predate those lads. But whereas Boy is all heart on sleeve by playing gauzy adolescent, teddy bear indie pop, Harry Hunks -- for the most part -- heads straight past nostalgia and right into country-tinged juvenilia with song titles like "Bambi Eyes" and "I'm Not Your Pet". The songs feel so off-the-cuff either with its la-la-la's or boom-chikka-chikka's to the point that Harry Hunks seems unlikely to move above the band's shambly pub circuit origins. What's worse: the vocalist, who only goes by the name Antti, sometimes is a dead ringer for Stewie from Family Guy! Still, brownie points must be awarded for this group's sterling usage of a Rhodes keyboard for what must be the first time in popular music since, um... 1979? Yee-haw!
[Insound]
— Zachary Houle
"I'm Not Your Pet": [MP3]
Pop
.: posted by Editor 8:27 AM
