The band doesn't really publish much information regarding their history and so on, but here is what I found out about them: the group is lead by Pete Petrisko, released their debut full-lenght "Afterglow" in 2009, and rather justly call their music Musique Concrète. This release is a promotional EP that features all that it should to project a comprehensive image of the band from many aspects: two songs (songs 1 and 3) from the full-lenght for the new listeners, two previously unreleased songs for the old fans, and a two-song live performance to show a different side of the band's sound. I can only compliment the EP's structure, and it has a pretty compact lenght, too.
The opener is pretty minimalistic. It consists of some fleshy and really low-pitch drone mixed with a mid-pitch droning sound, with some occasional screeching and noisy notes that blend in nicely. The peacefully waving drones form a calm soundscape, but one that still sounds warm and interesting enough to maintain your interest. The bass drone drops off in the end and is replaced with an old and pretty cheery phonograph-tune. The follow-up consists of some really harsh, crackling and gritty white noise with again some old phonograph-quality samples in the back; this time consisting of some speaking and some pretty interesting solo brass playing. It has a very interesting, heavily worn-out feeling throughout it's lenght and it appealed to me. In it's end there is some slightly more modern crackles that give the soundscape some additional life and flesh - yes, it's a small thing to mention, but it affects the whole track's nature.
After track three, which is a two-minuter that consists of some phonograph-songs cut up and mixed with each other to give the end result both dysty and and somewhat modern, even noisy experimental feel, we get to track four. It's based on some field recordings that consist of various beats, clangs, and other sounds of such nature, along with some even more mysterious squeaks and whatnot. It's topped with some occasional crackling, phonograph sample and calm droning to give it even more listening value and content in addition to making it fit more well together with the EP's other material. A rather fascinating and very minimal piece, but I doubt that some people will be put off by the field recording's "homemade" soundscape.
The ten-minute live performance doesn't really fit together with the previous material due to it's more life-like and fleshy soundscape, but I view it as bonus material on the release anyway. It consists of the same elements and instruments as the band's recorded material, but has a whole different feel: it's not covered in dust. It's also more based on individual sounds and instruments than on the whole soundscapes and their structures. It's interesting, but just doesn't sound right after the four previous songs. The band doesn't seem to do gigs almost at all, so I'm left wondering about why this performance was added to the EP in the first place. It does present the band from a different point of view, as I said in the first paragraph, but it alters the whole listening experience while doing so.
Releases like this are meant to get people interested in a band, so it seems that this EP served it's purpose well. It's hard to judge a band based on this amount of material, as I cannot tell if there's enough of interesting ideas and innovative experimentation that would make the band's expression last through a full-lenght. I cannot be sure what the band's style is exactly either, so I cannot really examine or point out things that could've been done differently to enchance the listening experience. I feel that the songs could have some more content in them to stay interesting for a longer time and to make a greater impact, but would this hurt the overall atmosphere and style? I cannot say.
This kind of music is meant to be served in a longer form, but it doesn't make this EP less worth checking out. Thumbs up for the artist's skill in getting the dynamics right as the EP is a surprisingly smooth listen despite it's style, and thumbs down for the unsatisfactory cover arts, not checking out the volume levels to match each other perfectly, and for the live track being more or less unrelated to the rest of the material. It's good stuff, but presented in a wrong form. I'll be waiting to hear more.