BREAKING SOUNDS: Volt 's/t' LP

posted Friday Apr 13th, 2007

It's not too often that new forms of music are hammered out of the circus mirror that's underground rock'n'roll and, whether intentionally or not, give rise to something completely new. Sure, you could squint your eyes and look back to Metal Urbain, Birthday Party, or more recently Karate Party or The Intelligence and see the clues, just as you could with blues music and it's relation to the advent of rock'n'roll. If there was one band you could pinpoint as the spark that kicked off what's going on in France with Glue Wave, it would have to be Volt.

If most fans of the more subversive angles of music were to come across Volt, or the sounds that come out of Electric Guitars, Cheb Samir or Cheveu ten years prior, we'd be so confused by their ethos that our cheeks would turn from it immediately. After all, we were still yanking it to the Oblivians back then and the time was just not quite ripe yet. But, times have changed! Combining drum machines with, not only synthesizers, but standard instrumentation that sounds like they are coming from synthesizers, and vocals that sound like they're sung through machinery with a production value that harks back to the late 90s bedroom, self-loathing scuzz, Glue Wave is definitely a new form altogether.

After releasing two powerful EPs and a single over the past couple of years, Volt's debut full-length is available on In The Red. Pulling from some of their back catalog, but offered up as different mixes, it paints a more vivid picture that combines their brands of sexy desolation. Tunes that build with wan streaks of futuristic gloom and evolve into a manic state, are choked out with echoed and alarming vocals that leave a taste of melancholy disdain that will worry and excite you at the same time. It will be available directly from In the Red here, in the next week or so.