Sequence

構成数 : 1
合計収録時間 : 00:00:00
Nottingham duo Rattle make their music with just two drum kits and spare singing, often wordless sounds more than traditional lyrical passages. In a live setting, drummer/singers Katharine Brown and Theresa Wrigley face each other, and sound engineer Mark Spivey applies dub-like live mixing to their interlocking rhythms and floating vocals. After a self-titled 2016 debut, Sequence finds Rattle expanding their approach from short bursts of energy and tight rhythmic punk into more restrained fare. The album is made up of just four songs, all approaching or exceeding the ten-minute mark, and relying on a far more protracted and slow-motion articulation of their rhythm-based compositions. Where earlier recordings were more explosive and recorded in a rougher fashion, Sequence feels categorically more subtle. The album begins with its longest song, the 12-plus-minute "DJ," a piece where every change is so metered and drawn-out that the song lingers more than it builds. Unlike many bands with two drummers blasting syncopated full-kit workouts, Rattle's ear for minimalism finds both Wrigley and Brown concentrating on reined-in elements of their kit, one attacking a hi-hat while the other provides polyrhythms on a tom, slowly adding new sounds as the song stretches on. This creates an atmosphere nothing short of hypnotic, melding the narcotic repetition of minimal house with the blunt force of post-punk. Indeed, album centerpiece "Signal" sounds like a Delta 5 dance track with everything but the drums and vocals subtracted. Echoes of canonical post-punk acts like the Slits, the Pop Group, and Au Pairs come through in both Rattle's harder edges and their flirtation with dub production. Here the delay-heavy mixing becomes an additional layer of rhythm in the band's wide-open sonic field. The spacious nature of Sequence makes it a challenging listen even for those versed in experimental approaches. At times the band's long-winded emptiness is as easy to lose focus on as it is to be mesmerized by. Patient listening, however, reveals a tightly focused and deliberately crafted work by a band pushing their art forward at an aggressive pace. ~ Fred Thomas