COMPOSERS: Assorted
LABELS: Edition Records
PERFORMER: Chris Montague (guitars), Kit Downes (organ), Joshua Blackmore (drums)
CATALOGUE NO: EDN1014
This lauded trio has music journalists reaching for their thesauruses, but let’s settle on something like ‘trip-hop influenced grunge fusion’ for now. This is a sensibly restricted 45 minutes of churning, gut-felt stuff that growls and snaps like a short-tempered bear.
The band has clearly got one sound and it’s going to use it, but the music’s a victim of the recorded sound – oddly claustrophobic given that this is a band that would sound wonderful in a huge, clattery space. And while I’m a fan of the slipped harmonic anchor afforded by the lack of a conventional bass instrument, seemingly compensating by upping the bass on everything else is just dull.
Nevertheless, there’s an extraordinary stylistic identity present here, and I suspect that their second album will be closer to a defining statement. Roger Thomas