Three Trapped Tigers - 7/1 (Too Pure)
3/5
Math rock. Not Foals' impenetrable and shouty pop, as some of the more cretinous music press would have you believe, but challenging, schizophrenic, time-changing math rock. It is very much a Marmite situation with this sub-genre - there are people that swear by it, and obsess feverishly with groups of their bespectacled buddies in doorms at Surrey University that smell of mothballs and DVD-drive cleaner; and there are people (quite a lot of people) that can't stand the stuff, and wheel out all the old arguments of self-indulgence and intellectual aloofness that any facet of prog inspires the second it crops up in conversation. I just tend to let it pass me by, blissfully ignorant to this ever shifting and mutating culture bubbling below the surface. It's a bit like CHUD, really.
So yes, Three Trapped Tigers are most definitely math rock, in all its angular and squiggly glory. The first offering here, '7', is angry from the off, opening with bracing feedback and a faded-in beat that wouldn't sound out of place on a Pendulum record. Of course, things don't stay this way for long, and the track careers off on all sorts of wild tangents of bursting noise. I can't actually tell you what any of it sounds like (this is not made for the pop charts, after all), but I remember being exceedingly impressed by everything that's going on, especially at the quite frankly astounding drumming that underpins everything ("underpins" is unfair, it practically runs this mother). '1' is built to a similar model, with some very visceral guitar playing set against subdued keyboards. Again, this is music to persevere with, but it's definitely worth that perseverance. Just don't expect to be humming it on the tube any time soon.
I can't say Three Trapped Tigers have set me on my way to my local NHS GP to pick up a pair of specks with inch-thick lenses, but they've definitely made me consider dipping my toe back into these murky depths sometime in the future. How near that moment may be, however, is another matter entirely.
Artists in this article: Three Trapped Tigers
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