Black Hearted Brother: Got Your Love EP

Despite their rather bleak moniker, Black Hearted Brother (a veritable post-rock supergroup featuring members of Slowdive, Seefeel and Opulent Oog) craft sunny, buzzy, synth-heavy, post-everything perfectly suited to warm summer afternoons idly spent wandering about with little to no real direction in mind. The title track, taken from the group’s debut Stars Are Our Home, features everything one would expect from a band like this circa 2014: multiple synth layers, often little more than ARP latched arppegiated figures; distant, hushed, angelic vocals; circular, repetitive melodic figures; disco-indebted drums; and rumbling, distorted bass.

“Don’t Take the Weight” seems to get lost within itself as the title is intoned over and over throughout the track’s relatively short run time, while various squiggly bleeps and bloops tumble about aimlessly. Doubling the original’s length in both instances, the second half of the EP features two remixes of “Got Your Love”, one from Ricardo Tobar, the other from Ultramarine. Of the two, Ultramarine’s improves slightly on the original, bending and stretching things just as one would expect in the age of the remix, however with more of an organic angle than Tobar’s twitchy, techy treatment.

All in all it’s a harmless, if ultimately fairly forgettable offering from one of the many bands currently exploring similar sonic terrain.