Volume X

Chicago trio that rose to underground fame in the mid-90’s along with all of Chicago post-rock (Tortoise, et al) in the same way all Seattle bands rose with Nirvana, even if they didn’t sound grunge. This band plays a killer brand of minimal yet complex rock, mostly instrumental, that incorporates bass synths, interesting synth/real drums, searing guitar and samples. Never afraid to to go balls-out you never know if they are going to chill in a Krautrock ambience next. First release in at least a decade (to my knowledge) and this comes out the gate running, is totally kick ass. Nice mix up of post-rock, Krautrock, noise, metal. Non-verbal centric.

1) (5:43) quiet fade-in to a pounding dirgey stoney plod rock juxtaposed over dreamy ethereal synths
2) (4:22) synth centered, strangely sampled instruments, spooky buried vocs, dark and ominous throughout
3) (4:01) Styx’esque synths bring this in, a triplet 5/3 thing going on in the beat that turns 4/4 at very end, Krautrock feel for sure
4) (1:27) cool simple drum beat buried under fucked up treatments, noise
5) (2:37) wall of sound driving, galloping w/ wanky guitar leads bordering on ironic hair metal spoof
6) (3:55) big mean bass synth over funky tribal simple upbeat synth beats
7) (2:14) big bad bass, heavy head nodding (real) drum beat
8) (4:34) vocoder effect on vocs very reminiscent of Joe Preston’s Thrones, big slow plodding music as well
9) (4:21) big minor toned synth rock, w/ killer ambient noise at the end
10) (4:48) out of place strummy acoustic guitars, very nice, kinda like post Barrett Pink Floyd before Waters started singing about his mommy issues