Roburt Reynolds is the man behind Room 101. He recorded and played everything on this five song EP and even tours by himself from the looks of it. How the hell he's putting together these hardcore bursts live has to be worth catching, it's weirdly intricate even mathy at times but loud while sounding buried back in late '80s hardcore.
"Recognize You" is hard out of the gate, real rough with treble guitar bursts chopped into pieces, Roburt is delivering these lyrics before they even have time to settle into meaning. Jangle spazzy guitar, this hits a double time section that gets him going even faster, vocals breaking. Low end chords that ramp up to high ones, he's programmed this drum machine to completely malfunction and then rehearsed for a LONG time to get these changes...a serious exercise in complexity. "Popularity" speeds in an off kilter rhythm, Roburt includes a little melody in this and it's almost garage if it weren't so crazily buried, so muddy it must have been ripped straight off the cassettes. The speed is also something you don't expect from this kind of catchy pop punk. He's got a manic tongue biting mental breakdown delivery of early Dead Kennedys combined with an almost late '90s industrial sound.
"Soul Finger" weird klunky chords with heavy echo in that 4track scary style, the presence of those recordings this is exactly what worried you a little bit, the punk that seemed to be right up to the line of too extreme for the guys in the garage. The bass line takes over revving this up and grinding to a hault in a free jazz vocal, screamed over the meltdown of guitars and out of tune chords.
B-Side's "Fascion (with XVC)" has a dirge style slow krunky opening, the drums even sound slowed down a bit - wait this side is pressed at 45? Still slow but with an groove hard edge kept in line with the the guitar that's off on its own anti-melodies. Something like the mathy powerhouse parts of Unwound. His wife yelling "FASCION!" is a nice touch, everything direct into a 4-track and teased out vocally. Echo damaged guitar, the bass trying to keep this on a solid even keel, but the whole thing keeps careening around completely off course and it doesn't take long to just sink directly to the bottom. "Los Desaparecidos" is the shortest protest, super spazz hardcore, kick snare machine gun style, stops for a second for a bassline to break this up, but it's got to be a ten second song tops. Maybe this one is supposed to be at 33?
On purple vinyl with lots of insets, like the 0 dollar bills with US Treasury facts on the reverse. They aren't fun but as long as this paper buys me more single then I don't CARE.
No comments:
Post a Comment