Fuckwolf: Fuckwolf (Kimosciotic CD)
I have a confession to make: the only reason I stumbled onto this album was because of the band's name. Not because I adore bands with "fuck" in their name, but because I was trolling around for info on Fuck Buttons the other day, and when I noticed this one, I decided to give it a whirl as well. Outside of an outrageous name and a left-of-center sound, the two have little in common, but Fuckwolf's self-titled debut is actually pretty interesting stuff.
The first thing I noticed about this album is that it sounds a bit dated... not in a bad way necessarily, but it does sound like it was made some time ago in terms of its production and aesthetic. It has the same weird disregard for genre that one might attribute to the old Factory days of post-punk or early New York no-wave, but also has a healthy amount of dub influence thrown in. There's plenty of spring reverb and delay here to go around, even as the music itself echoes the long-gone scrawl of an obscure Factory act like Ike Yard or the disembodied voices and anti-rock of some of Throbbing Gristle's old music. It's a curious blending of sounds that both makes it seem timely in its free spiritedness but also somewhat of the past due to its various reference points.
The defining characteristics of the band's music are the use of mechanical drumming, often repeating the same phrase over and over with a vaguely militaristic quality, and the use of weird, affected noodly guitar patterns. Often times the guitar sounds like strings are being bent and detuned (or perhaps tape-manipulated) to waver in and out of key and sync with the music, building on the nervousness that the rhythm section perpetuates through each of these 7 tracks. The production and use of heavy-handed delay and reverb gives it the cavernous depth of dub, but it's anything but chill due to the anxious arrangements within. It all has a vaguely melty, nightmarish quality.
I imagine this would be a fun act to see live, because I suspect that the recordings are only a portion of the experience. After all, Kimosciotic's site refers to their aesthetic as "aural douche" which I can only imagine is better in person!
audio clip (m4a): So What
more information: Myspace | Kimosciotic
buy it: Emusic | iTunes | Amazon