Guitar, keyboards and drums remain staple instruments, but the driving bass guitar is ditched as samplers and electronics become increasingly central. Matt sampled, chopped and re-sequenced sections of Jewell's druming, forming a series of piled-up rhythms and loops. With this foregrounding of both rhythm and a spiralling mass of processed tones / melodies, 'Laced' could pass as a very a fried, psychedelic dance record. Numerous tracks bring to mind the early '90s indie-dance axis of MBV's 'Loveless' / Happy Mondays' 'Pills...' / Primal Scream's 'Screamadelica'. Squelchy, fluid and immersive, its huge blown-out swathes of blissfully reverberant FX, buried voices, smeared electronics and melted-out guitar processing recall the likes of Black Dice, Growing and Animal Collective. The pitchbent synth opening the 8-minute long I Hate The Beach' replicates Omar Souleyman's Syrian horns; Another Sides harmonica and acoustic guitar nods towards Dylan; whilst the frequent blissed-out frequency mess summons the spirit of Astral Social Club. There are blissfully shimmering loop-sections; places where the whole buckles in on itself. At the centre of the slurred, swirling chaos is Matts gnarly, nasal vocal.
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