Playlouder - Music is the Network

Amongst the confused mess of silver disks on the desk this week is one I thought I ought to give a moment to, as I’m off to see them in the flesh later in the week.

A Place To Bury Strangers is their name, and cacophonic, gloomy, disturbing post-punk shoegaze is their game.

The lead track ‘To Fix The Gash In Your Head’ is a refreshing though scuzzy guitar and drum-machine skirmish with vocals bubbling up like gas from the cracked ocean floor. At a time when anyone with a fuzz pedal is getting a severe testicle-licking from the press, it’s nice to hear something with a bit of a kick to it.

The amusing news story accompanying the delayed-release of this, double A-side is that the record has been put back from 5th to 12th May because the songs were just so LOUD that during the recording for the 10 inch, the pressing plant broke down. The “red noise levels” were too high, apparently. I bet the alleged “loudest band in NYC” were absolutely gutted when they heard this.

Personally, it’s the third and fourth tracks (remixes? B-sides? Who knows? Who cares?) that really do it for me – seriously evil electro tracks like New Order reanimated by Satan, with beats that put the British shite my ears have recently been befouled with to shame.