My musical life tends to be a one-track thing. For the past week or more I've been doggedly (but with delight) listening thru the entire corpus of the Mekons, chronologically, as a single playlist on my iPod. I'm maybe 250 tracks into the total 370. I've passed thru the "punk" Mark I Mekons, the country & western Mark II Mekons, the delightfully experimental mid-period Mekons, & am now into the turn-of-the-millennium "retrospective" Mekons (ie, 2 volumes of odds 'n' sods, before they come roaring back in full force with Journey to the End of Night).Instrumental rock isn't a genre I've given a lot of thought to, tho I'll blushingly admit to owning way too many King Crimson records, and even having once upon a time been able to play "Red" (badly) on the guitar. If you're still inclined to think of the genre in terms of surf rock (The Ventures, Dick Dale) or of noodly jazz improvs, you need to buy the above EP, There Are Crashes. It's by the Bells≥, a new Brooklyn-based band whose drummer – the only reason I know about this group – is the redoubtable Zach Barocas, whom I know as the proprietor of the excellent Cultural Society website. Zach's an excellent editor, a smart & sensitive poet, and a powerful & expressive whaler of the skins. This is muscular & exciting music, continually reaching out for, & then foreswearing, the "big" gesture. It reminds me of nothing so much as Mission of Burma in their prime. A lovely noise.
Hie thee to Bandcamp (for fancy formats) or the iTunes Store.
