Labels: Lovitt
Review by: Andy Malcolm
Well here it is, the first truely great, brand new record I’ve heard of the Twenty First Incendiary. I will be quite stunned if this doesn’t make it into my end of year top 10, quite stunned. Because Milemarker have come up with a record that is so staggeringly good, each song diverging from each other, yet still it all comes together as a coherent singular entity. Yeah yeah, so they’re using keyboards and synths and stuff in there, and that’s the hip new thing to do, but no-one ever complains about bands who use guitars. As that’d be dumb. So just let it ride, either the phenomenon will wear off, or it’ll become as commonplace as the drumkit before you know it and no-one will bat an eyelid.
So I wasted a paragraph and I haven’t really said much yet. By the way, now is the time to explain (if you didn’t already know) that Milemarker feature someone from Sleepytime Trio. But that’s not important right now. Because the music speaks for itself. And maybe you even hate Sleepytime Trio, so might use that as a deterent from buying this. DON’T. This is a grade A (for awesome) LP.
Things kick in with a whacked techno intro that I absolutely love! It’s way cool. Then things are go with “Frigid Forms Sell You Warmth” which is all about grooving post hardcore indie rock, and urgent sung vocals. It recalls all manner of bands, including the likes of 3 Penny Opera, At the Drive In, and certain other elements of the Lovitt roster. But where Milemarker really shine is through that afforementioned use of keyboards. They break this one down with a little casio keyboard interlude, then the song comes raging back again. And things carry on from that point onwards. “Signal Froze” shows off their more electronic side, all dark beats and swirly 80’s synths, bizarre robotic samples, and disconcerting female vocals that really work well for me. Everything else on here is somewhere in between. And it’s all top notch. The classy “Cryogenic Sleep” makes the most of their girl vocals and a features a chorus of monks (later angels) going aaaah, the song spiralling towards the conclusion amidst some awesome shrieks.
I’ve got a feeling this might be a concept record in a way, things seem to centre around bleakness and technology, I dunno. I should analyse it I guess, but I’ll leave that to you. And anyway, this is Collective, not Pitchfork or any one of those stupid reviews sites that never tells you a thing about the band, rather serving as a vehicle to show off how literate the reviewer is.
If At The Drive In (hardly a bad band in their own right) had more ideas, this is how they’d sound. Demolition.