This instrumental act from North Carolina plays quirky math rock with some slight metallic flare and a good amount of jazzy influences going on as well. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but it's not terrible, so I'll just start rolling through a few thoughts. First things first, the drummer is fucking awesome. The percussion tones sound fucking perfect, he hits hard when he should and plays it soft when it fits, there are a lot of sick fills and amazing cymbal flashiness... I'm impressed. The recording in general is really dry and natural, and I love that. The bass sounds really strong and offers up a tight performance as well. But nothing outshines those drums. The guitars are what has me torn. Some of the cleaner arpeggios or smoother, more flowing runs are fucking great, especially when heading in the jazz direction. And of course some of the quickly staggered mathy runs, while typical, are also enjoyable. What disappoints me is that the songs don't have a lot of feeling. There's no real sense of cohesion for me, and I feel like it's musicians having fun playing moderately challenging music rather than really pushing themselves to create some sort of emotional or memorable song out of their techniques. At times they do structure things well and lock in on a really nice riff, but I absolutely hate all of the random noodling and sparsely chaotic nonsense that they break into sometimes, because that shit just sounds like a bunch of guys warming up for band practice. "I Don't Remember Falling Asleep Here" is more of an experimental piece, using lots of reverberating notes and droning, sludgy textures, and I'd far rather hear them experiment with that form of loose playing than the random messing around junk. The layout is absolutely excellent here. Most of the package is bright pink, and all of the illustrations are just crazy. Some have more of a twisted comic book look, others have what leans towards a tattoo style, but it's all very vibrant and appealing in my opinion. There's one abstract photo in the center spread that's far more menacing than any of the other visuals, with some text that reads, "The culture industry tends to make itself the embodiment of authoritative pronouncements, and thus the irrefutable prophet of the prevailing order. Harkheimer/Adorno 1947". So there's definitely some sort of underlying thought going into this work, I assume. My final call here is that these cats are really good musicians with a good ear for recording and a decent talent for writing riffs, but they're not yet successful songwriters. In its entirety this CD is way too damn long for what it has to offer, and I would much prefer hearing these guys focus on building coherent songs around a solid core rather than throwing around so many different changes. Not bad, but it needs work.
[Angura]
Running time - 54:07, Tracks: 12
[Notable tracks: I Don't Remember Falling Asleep Here, Lament for Bhopal]
Angura Sound - http://www.angurasound.com
