Tag Archives: noise rock

Among the Rocks and Roots – Raga

by Dæv Tremblay

The Music

The Words

Raga is a brand new album from the experimental noise rock duo Among the Rocks and Roots, formed by Abdul-Hakim Bilal and Samuel Goff. Armed with a bass guitar, a drum set, and a voice, the two-man group play distorted and slow, cathartic music that is politically and socially engaged, lyrically. Indeed, Raga is the second part to an upcoming trilogy about addiction, and tackle the themes of abuse, race, and class conflict.

While I didn’t feel engrossed by part one of this trilogy, Samudra garba pathe, Raga is speaking to me. I have … Read more

The Central – Sick and Dying

by Dæv Tremblay

The Music

The Words

Wisconsin’s The Central totally killed it, back in 2016, with their album Discovery of a Rat. Without any foretelling, they released Sick and Dying on Valentine’s Day. This EP is a nice follow-up to Discovery of a Rat. Its mathy post-hardcore is still here and still sounds fresh, perhaps because of a few new changes and additions. First of all, their sound seems to have put on some weight, making it closer to mathcore than it was on their previous effort. Secondly, I feel that there are more atmospheric moments; we could call them … Read more

Rivener – Rivener

by Dæv Tremblay

The Connecticut free rock duo Rivener sent me a message about their 2016 album, Svengali Gaze, about which I had mixed feelings – a sentiment I still hold. On September first, they released its successor in this self-titled package of about one dodrant-hour long. Here, I feel a stronger sense of vision and unity within the duo, which translates into semi-improvisations serving much more convincing purposes. The songs on Rivener are oddly reminiscent of Omniataxia‘s “Scatterwhite” in their construct and in their final forms. The band definitely borrows a lot from free jazz, but they apply their knowledge … Read more

Sheen Marina – Travel Lightly

by Dæv Tremblay

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