posted 11/12/2008 (Wed) @ 08:06 pm

>>> Music Reviews

Adebisi Shank - This Is the Album of a Band Called Adebisi Shank (2008)

Hard Rock / Bitpop / Experimental

Get Shanked!

cover art

  1. You Me
  2. Dodr
  3. Colin Skehan
  4. Shunk
  5. Mini Rockers
  6. Agassi Shank
  7. I Answer To Doc
  8. Snakehips

I, like many fans/reviewers of indie music, have a medical condition. A handicap. Maybe an infectious brain tumor? When I hear music that truly floors me, words stymie me. Descriptions swirl around in my head, tag teaming exuberance. So many different angles of attack, so many different things that should—nay, need to be said… yet I’m at a loss for words.

Call it what you want—echolalia, verbal diarrhea, don’t-know-when-to-STFU disease. It feels like trying to vomit my brain into a word processor. The words are there, but there’s too many of them to organize.

So I guess Adebisi Shank have the same illness. Their delightfully meta album titles and lack of a vocalist (except for the one hiding behind a robotic talk box/vocoder on the opener “You Me”) both point to a loss of words.

They probably listened to their own record. What kind of fluoride do they put in the water in Ireland? Bass swells, car alarm bleeps, fedback delay pedals, and fractured belches of guitar all compete in here like cats in a sack, adding up to a sound it seems humans couldn’t possibly produce alone. “When I heard this i thought it was fake - it sounds like random and badly placed loops from Garageband. Amazing that it is a real band!” writes one YouTube commenter.

The album art—multi-colored electricity lines clawing their way out of architectural graph paper—is as good a description of their sound as any. Intricately chaotic electric guitar is the unmistakable focus of This Is The Album Of A Band…. The rich, throaty buzz of a low fidelity transistor fuzz burping with fried, sub-octave madness forms the core of the Adebisi Shank sound. Eruptions of two-handed tapping trickle and spurt out the speakers, supported by a corset-tight rhythm section. Their guitarist, Lar Kaye, an obviously effects pedal addicted gearhead, is refreshingly spry on the fretboard—sort of Eddie Van Halen’s even nerdier, spaz-rock cousin: regimented, yet haywire and passionate at the same time.

It’s impossible to pick a favorite, but “DODR” (”daughter” in Robot, mayhap?) exemplifies everything there is to love about Adebisi Shank: rich dynamics that flow seamlessly from drifting clean passages to staccato sludge-fuzz licks, Megadrive guitar tone and riffs that will bring out your inner six-year old to battle the Mini Boss again.

Do not miss this one. Pry yourself away from Melt Banana and the Polysics and get this record now. Or else. I’ll Shank you myself if I have to.

Links

Download (All Time Greatest Hits) (support the artists—pay the band if you like it)
Myspace
CDbaby

Adebisi Shank @ a house party in someone’s living room

“You Me” live in Germany 2007

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Permalink | November 12th, 2008

1 comment on this article

  1. Adebisi Shank - This Is the Album of a Band Called Adebisi Shank (2008) | definedebt.com Says:
    November 12th, 2008 at 8:41 pm

    [...] The rest is here [...]

Leave a Reply