New stuff from Agna Moraine’s? Crikey. Apparently this has been waiting three years for release now, and eventually they scrambled it out with apologies for the layout of the booklet. I am left questioning – where are the patches? The screenprinted poetry? The excesses that they went to on their previous record? Tsk, tsk and thrice tsk! Not to worry, it’s more music from Agna Moraine’s Autobiography everybody! Ex-Constatine Sankathi sorts! Well, the music is a little different to their previous 7″ for the most part. It’s much less hardcore styled, more in the vein of someone like Cap’n Jazz but with passionate screams and desperately spoken vocals. Lots of hyper-active jangly guitar keeps the whole thing off balance. “Choking on the Rain” is severely hectic and all over the place, bouncing off walls and screaming the house down. It’s emo, baby. My favourite of the tracks is “Harvest of Breath,” which packs in a little more melody and is completely different to anything else they’ve done. Splendid.
In all the hubbub I almost forgot there was another band on the other side. Rentamerica. I don’t know if they are in anyway connected to Agna. I doubt it, seeing as they have a sensible name. They play lo-fi emoviolence. Terribly recorded music, that absolutely flies a long at an insane pace. High pitched yelped vocals, instruments thrashed, and drums beat you into submission. I love the drum sound that crazy bands get on lo-fi recordings for some reason. Anyway, all the songs end up sounding fairly samey, I could draw comparisons to Palatka and Mohinder, but the abysmal sound quality they have doesn’t really help too much. Oh, and they do the Indian Summer thing with an old jazz / blues singer playing between songs. I would definitely be interested in hearing these guys with a better recording.