There are some serious overlooked gems in this Negative Fun subscription series. First the Midnight Plus One single opened up a dark psych direction and that Positive No single introduced me to one of my recent favorite EP's. I think I'm saying that not only do I like a label blindly sending new music every couple of months but I NEED the curation. If Negative Fun has taken the time to schedule out a years worth of singles to deliver to subscribers it's because these are the singles they feel strongest about. No Other is a philly based trio with one of those naturally gifted lead singers in Maria Sciarrino that can pull off the demanding range of hardcore or go completely breathy and atmospheric alongside their equally eclectic mix of post punk and experimental shoegaze.
A-Side's "Option C" opens with a severe no frills punk bass line setting the tone for scratchy jagged guitar distortions and heavy foot stomp. Maria on vocals has a full sounding trained vocal like Corin Tucker that can all of a sudden fly into an upper register maintaining serious control of her quiver. The tone is all the way at the extreme end of post punk, modern and stark like those massive concrete eastern european housing projects. Rigid and sticking to a prescribed plan, the solo if you can call it that, is all stutter off kilter notes that work in those minor key ways over the repeating assembly line riffs, sliding or patched in from another track entirely they seem to be saying it doesn't have to fit. Just realizing that 'option C' refers to the other choice that wasn't even brought up. I don't like either of the choices and I'm going with the third one I just made up.
B-Side's "Opaque" slides in with a heavy watery chorus guitar flirting with reverb and Maria has a "Back on the Chain Gang" Chrissie Hynde sound on this one over the slow moving chords. It expands into a dense crashing distortions that get swallowed by delay and this tropical pop sound goes noisy shoegaze. This one breaks for an experimental effects filled solo also, the whole track a big 180 from where you'd expect this to go based on that A-Side. This seems to combine more obscure references into something more unclassifiable. If they can get that surprise on a seven inch imagine where they could go with two sides of a full length.
The only way to pick this up is getting that whole set direct from Negative Fun.
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