SPOELSTRA – I got issues the shape
of italy
(10”, narrominded)
Well, who hasn’t. Anybody
got issues, more or less serious ones. From the inability of performing at
work to bad family traumas to the political situation to all kinds of
nitpicking stuff that makes everyday life a fucking hell. Just look at food
packaging in the supermarket and you’ll find enough reasons to go crazy
right then and there – but as good citizens with education and manners we
know that somehow we have to deal with it and then get on with life. I am
not sure which shape mine are, for instance, or anybody’s, but Italy is as
good a choice as any. Life is a bitch, and if you can get away with it, then
do it. No questions and no second thoughts, and for god’s sake don’t
discuss it with anyone. Nobody is interested in your story anyway.
A completely different set of
issues comes in when you have been in a band for some time and then start
self recording stuff that is in your head and then of course you want to get
it out. The other bandmembers aren’t interested (they say it is fucking
country music, but it is not…) and your label says, okay, but we’ll do a
ten inch transparent lathe in a print run of 50 pieces. And you think, hell,
nobody is gonna hear it, nobody is gonna write about it, what the heck am I
doing that for? Or you don’t but anyway you are right in some ways and
wrong in some others. Get along with it, it is just the way it is.
Speolstra is the guitar player
in Boutros Bubba
(whose new album is due to be reviewed in here soon enough as well) and he
has laid down six tracks that mix weirdness and vision (where is the
difference anyway?), jangling noise and strange rhythms, heavy drumming and
original guitars, and an intrusive melody here and there. The only
country-allusion is to be found in the first song, fittingly called “I
breathe country”, whereas later on this EP is filled with post-futuristic
synthie sounds, robo-dances, post-core fractality, electro beats and some
more bad ass guitar playing. Like a mix of Shellac and The Flaming Lips
without a singer. Not bad for somebody working from home alone, innit?
“Pig in Japan” stands out
for being not a lot more than siren sounds layered over one another and
“Post War Germany always rings twice” stands out for the songtitle and
the mix of melancholic guitars with warbled effect noises. Other songtitles
are as weird as those two mentioned, by the way. There is a lot in these
simple twenty minutes of loner music. The most interesting thing is how easy
most of it sounds, while in fact it is bursting with complexity at times and
actually ruled by chaos in some ways. Maybe it is not complex, I am no
musician, but it sounds warbled and like regular alternative rock kicked in
the guts, so there has to be something to it. Otherwise everybody else would
do it this way as well, right?
