Christmas day today. I mean, obviously nobody's reading it today, but I'm posting it. I always get a lot done over the Christmas holidays, it's an advantage of not haviong children. Anyway, enjoy yourselves, and all that.
GREAT MEDICAL DISASTER – DIE, YOU BITCH, CRIED ARCHITECT (Pronoia Records)
Instrumental rock certainly splits opinion, so whilst some might not fancy Die, You Bitch, Cried Architect, we’re all for its widescreen, menacing music that we feel increasingly uncomfortable calling post-rock with every passing year in which rock itself fails to dematerialise (we suppose we’re stuck with it, at least until Hannah Barbera rebrands The All New Popeye Hour as Some Increasingly Outmoded Sub-Standard Animation).
“Lambs” may be a delightfully greasy rock track minus the hairy vocalist, but Great Medical Disaster’s best moments come when tracks are stretched and textural effects are liberally slathered: “Man United Killed Rod Hull” is Mogwai with sickly synth washes, taking us to a cluttered office in which an 80s detective fingers blinds to watch a steamy neon night (warning: individual hallucinations may differ). “The Beatification Of Cardinal Newman” reminds us of Oxford favourites Flies Are Spies From Hell with its tumbling piano climax, and it’s only when the tunes don’t seem to earn their dynamic flurries that things are unsatisfying – “Jesus Loved The Nun-Chucks” has lovely glistening guitars, but the bursts of noise are safe and unthreatening. Think log flume, not rollercoaster. Sometimes Great Medical Disaster are too happy within the confines of their genre, then, but when a Badalamenti eeriness is injected, and the evocative atmospheres come together, this is a great little record. Hell, the track titles have more imagination than some whole bands’ careers.
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