Richmond, VA's The Setup (not the Belgian act of the same name) start this split off with three tracks of material that's definitely a bit heavier and more aggressive than their past efforts. Expect scathing vocal screams, lots of dirty textures to the instrumentation, a pretty significant emphasis on rhythm, and enough dynamic shifts to add some darker atmospheres to the writing. "Calling All Ninjas" drops lots of metal riffing, including some (dare I say) tremolo picking riffs that are reminiscent of black metal on some level; "Does This Record Look Good on Me?" has a slightly quieter break with only faintly distorted guitars amongst plenty of chunky rhythms and some excellent dissonant layers; and "Post-Graduate Barbarian" opens with another almost clean passage before plowing into some midpaced chord progressions that are a bit more powerful than the preceding tracks (though all three are quite good). The recording is also a bit grittier than their last EP was, definitely adding to its harder edge. The drums stand out a little but do have a pretty nice sort of thunder happening, the bass is distorted and beefs things up right in line with the guitars, and the guitars are dry and fairly thick with solid midrange - not too clear and certainly not polished, but definitely working well in cooperation with the basslines. And I really enjoy the lyrics here, they're creatively written and make their point without beating anything into the ground: "Is it getting hot in here or am I still just faking it? Let's be reasonable here, the beginning of the rest of my life is merely the death of passion." Good stuff. Schematic of a Waking Life follows with four shorter tracks that have more of a frantic indie feel and vocals that are screamed but have a little bit of strange melody happening. There's definitely an off kilter rock thing going on as well, the tempos and structures are borderline catchy at times, but the guitar parts are quirky enough to really add a different sensibility. The basslines roam around as well, they're not just laying a foundation for the guitars at all. "A Few Years Dumber" has more of a spacious construction where the panning of the guitars interacts more obviously with lots of seemingly unrelated riffs that piece together over top of one another, and "Echoes Are Not Voices" is a little more succinct and uniquely memorable with its winding note-based runs and unified rhythms. As far as the production goes, it's somewhat similar to what The Setup has going on here - a little dirty, but well mixed, and fitting for what they're doing. I'd say these tracks are a bit more cohesively tracked since the drums are nice and warm and fall in with the other instrumentation, but there's definitely a fitting rawness to the overall bite. Here the lyrics are pretty introspective in a way, but definitely reflecting on larger topics as well: "And how comforting is it to sleep in beds of roses when we all know that tomorrow they'll rot?" The layout looks really nice, using a minimal color scheme of mostly bright green, bright yellow, and brown with a little black and white for high contrast designs of insects and such. Half of the booklet goes to each band for lyrics and such, with plenty of artwork surrounding everything, so it kind of jumps out at you. A good split, indeed. I'm more interested in The Setup's half of the disc, but Schematic of a Waking Life doesn't disappoint.
[Electric Human Project]
Running time - 21:59, Tracks: 7
[Notable tracks: Does This Record Look Good on Me?, Post-Graduate Barbarian, A Few Years Dumber, Echoes Are Not Voices]
The Electric Human Project - http://www.electrichumanproject.com
