Milco is the most Animals as Leaders-like non-Animals as Leaders project I’ve listened to, recently. The debut EP of Raymond Milco, 練馬 (Nerima), is full of bittersweet technical djent riffs, with the common thumping, tapping, and advanced chords that are often lazily called jazzy. The twenty-odd minutes of the EP are made out of intelligent composition and ingenious ideas; the songs flow more intuitively than on The Madness of Many, AAL’s latest endeavour. Of course, Ray doesn’t come near the levels of virtuosity displayed by Messrs. Abasi, Reyes, and Garstka, the skills of Milco are more than appreciable and … Read more
Tag Archives: math rock
Glass Bell – Glib Glab
Music is a wonky art form. It’s so ethereal and intangible, unlike poetry or sculpture. It’s just variations in the density of a medium – air, most of the time –: they pass you by and you try to grab enough to make sense of them. You don’t get a second glance, you can’t hold it and analyse it thoroughly unless it’s transformed; either as notation or spectrum analysis. That’s why, I suppose, the most popular forms of music keep their message simple; more people can comprehend what they’re experiencing. Even then, it’s messy, it’s blurry, and, most of all, … Read more
Sheen Marina – Travel Lightly
Sheen Marina describe themselves as a ‘surf-noise’ band. However, I think that’s doing their music a disfavour, as it cannot be completely covered by this umbrella term. In their upcoming album, Travel Lightly, there are also strong flavours of math rock and avant-prog, which can hardly be foreseen with the ‘surf noise’ label. This thirty-minute album consists of nine tracks with varying degrees of interbreeding with the other aforementioned genres, all over a pretty clear, reverb-drenched surf rock basis. ‘WYSC’, for example, is almost a straight-up math rock song, with complex rhythms and odd time signatures, while ‘Nose Ring … Read more
Sub:Shaman – Apnea
Coming all the way from Singapore, progressive indie rock band Sub:Shaman just released their most recent album, Apnea. Consisting of nine explorative tracks, this forty-five minute magnum opus intertwines a wide variety of genres into the band’s own style and vision. Progressive rock, math rock, indie, and jazz all partake in the melting pot that is Apnea. The alternative quintet will use scat singing, pulsating electronic notes, dissonant chords, odd metres, and seventh chords to their advantage, and it creates something greater than the sum of its parts. I didn’t remember why I followed this page on bandcamp, but … Read more
Featherwolf – Featherwolf
It’s not every day that you see a math rock quintet delivering an album that’s as whacky as the more experimental duos and trios out there, but that’s just what Los Angeles’ Featherwolf have done. Their eponymous debut album cooks bands like Doom Salad and Yowie and dissolves them into something less volatile, more manageable, but that still has a lot of angles and personality. Featherwolf isn’t for the faint of heart, you definitely need to like your rock spicy and varied. It’s a great, entertaining EP, and a promising start for the band!