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March 18th, 2006 by Eric K (Permalink)
Label: Cuneiform Year: 2006 Add Comments |
According to my calculations, the quality of releases from a particular genre is inversely proportional to the number of bands practising it. It happened to Prog, it’s happening to the instrumental Post-Rock of the Godspeed You!/Mogwai ilk and now it looks like Math Rock may also be suffering from over-saturation; every kid with a guitar and a knowledge of compound meter eager to jump on the last train to Jazzville via a Phd in music theory from the Hella Laboratory of Rock.
Fortunately, there are a few not content to simply bow down at the alter of Don Caballero and spark the movement with invention and progression. Ahleuchatistas (say that three times as fast as you can!) take the free-form pointillism of Volta Do Mar to its furthest extreme, jagged angular guitars careering into the rhythmic geometrical blast-beats of caffeinated drummer Sean Dail. It’s Dail’s precise, economical kitwork that epitomises the Ahleuchatistas ethic: have something to say and say it succinctly and with passion. This is unsurprising considering where they take their name - a moniker as tongue-twisting as their music – which combines “Zapatistas” (radical Mexican revolutionary movement – politics ed) with the name of a Charlie Parker improvisational piece. It serves as an adequate explication of the fusion at work here: song-titles like Remember Rumsfeld at Abu Ghraib ally the group with the ‘disenfranchised’ of society whilst doffing a knowing cap to Charles Mingus’ Remember Rockefeller at Attica. Challenging, cerebral music like this has a tendency to get a bit academic, melding seemingly endless guitar noodles with intricate lock-step passages in 5/8 time hardly likely to stock the shelves of Woolworths, but What You Will explodes from the start with a boundless, deceptive chaos that captivates more often than it confuses.
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