Post-rock is one of those misbegotten terms that serves more to obfuscate than elucidate. As an instrumental three-piece from Chicago playing expansive, unclichéd, unobvious rock/metal, Russian Circles can't really hope to escape such labeling.
But categories aside, what makes RC one of the most exciting bands around—apart from their power to cook up a musical maelstrom—is the sense of "positive blindness" that not being lumbered with a singer gives their music.
On numbers like the relentlessly building When the Mountain Comes to Muhammed and the towering title track, you get a sense of three musicians probing and exploring the music from deep within, rather than aiming for a distant spot on the horizon. On the frenetic, pulsating Malko, they just sound so tight band-wise that you imagine them sharing bathwater and sleeping in the same bed.
Colin Liddell
Metropolis
26th November, 2009
0 comments:
Post a Comment