EXZOSKELETON
Exploring Biology
Aaaaargh! It's those pesky noise-aesthetic guys again! Are there not enough Borbetomagus albums in this world, that they feel they have to inflict all this upon us? Well, yes, they do sound a lot -- an awful lot -- like the Borbs, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Like all decent music which revels in playing as fast, loud and long as possible, once you get into it there's plenty here to enjoy.

First off, this isn't one of those releases which contains a single, hour-long track. Those things are virtually impenetrable. Instead, what you get here are five tracks of sensible length (five to twelve minutes) plus a pushing-it twenty minuter, all untitled (natch). The musicianship is hard to judge, and cries of "anyone could do that" will be heard in your living room if you play it to your mates. Maybe anyone could, although a certain level of physical fitness would be required to do it for long. These guys get their heads down, and there's no leaning on shovels going on here. Yet there's certainly some musical intelligence of some sort working here, because each track surprises you by sounding, well, different. How they achieve this is hard to tell. Perhaps they kick all their instruments down different vertiginous flights of stairs for each piece.

Secondly, there seems to be plenty of attitude about the band, which is nice. So much loud agressive-sounding music is made by young men with nice haircuts and expensive PowerBooks. These guys seem to want to have fun with it. "This music should be enjoyed by hippies", they suggest on their press release. Right-o. They refer to David S Ware (and they're talking about old DSW, not the new, big-label-friendly version) and, of all people, Sun Ra, seeming keen to stress that they see themselves in a jazz lineage rather than an industrial one. Interestingly, this has some credibility; following an exemplary solo by Joe Shrapnel (possibly not his real name) about halfway through track five, Sides comes in with what can only be described as a swinging blast of fractured bebop. Well, would you ever. And yet the whole jazz thing is probably just a piss-take.

Finally, there's something fantastically local about this record. The press release is full of references to the band's mates, and the disc itself is -- it could hardly be otherwise -- horribly recorded in what may or may not have been a horrible little basement somewhere deeply uncommercial. This isn't meant patronisingly, indeed it seems likely that all of this is deliberate, the usual two-fingered salute to globalised music-industry things. Then again, Sides says the music has no "hateful attitudes or musical politics agenda", so who knows?

Sure, you'll know if you got this far whether you love or hate this sort of thing. It's rather hard going, and it may not be the most sophisticated music you'll hear all year, but there really are some cunning musical ideas floating around in here, and the commitment and energy which go into this music are admirable in themselves. What makes this record good rather than just admirable is the apparent ability the group has to keep things moving along and retain the listener's interest (or at least this listener's interest) at such an intense and unrelenting pace.

Richard Cochrane, Musings(UK)