Tsuji Girl / The Sonar Yen - 'Poison Light EP' (Soviet Union)
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
So this is what's going on in Manchester at the minute, then... Amidst the resurgence of rock in recent times, most areas of the country have staked a claim for greatness, but Manchester seems to have remained strangely absent. That is, however, until now. With 'The Poison Light EP', a joint-effort from two of the most promising bands in the city, our northern friends show us they certainly aren't shutting up quite yet.
First up are the excellently-named Tsuji Giri (meaning the Samurai right to ambush innocent passers-by to test out new knives, obviously): an almighty, raucous mix of early Sonic Youth & mid-period Fugazi, topped off with rasping six-strings and little respect for your eardrums. Opener, and possibly finest track on the whole EP, 'Gotta Love The War', sees singer Martin Giri (no surnames here, thank you) yelp like a paranoid Johnny Rotten over echoed guitars and gorgeous white noise.
The following 'Synthasizin' ingeniously manages to craft a beast of a tune almost entirely out of feedback; no, this isn't a band with their mind set on the melancholy. As with most groups focused on the more dissonant side of things, there's an alarming degree of musicianship to it all despite very little melody on display anywhere. And, remember, to know how to destroy music, you've got to know how to construct it in the firstplace: certainly, Tsuji Giri are the sound a band blowing up their work to a gyrating beat.
There must have been a fight or two over who got to put their tracks first on this EP. The equally full-on Sonar Yen, it seems, lost the battle. It's not that their contributions aren't up there with the Giri's in terms of quality, it's simply that the two bands suffer from sounding a little too alike each other than is healthy.
Thus, there's a shared focus on all things noise-worthy, the vocals again taking a narrative structure instead of opting for singing, and the latter's peak arriving with the excellent 'Breaking Point', an epic cacophony of unexpected twists and dizzying tempo-changes similar to the line of attack My Bloody Valentine used to exert.
Thankfully, these two upstarts aren't the only purveyors of the scene out there - just venture into rock's underground and there's a whole, devoted clan of bands all hacking away at their guitars with similar ferocity. Thanks to their un-commercial nature though, acts as special as The Sonar Yen and Tsuji Giri aren't easy to discover. If you're willing to put in the effort however, the rewards are here for all to see.
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