L'Homme Puma - On Remplace Les Yeux Cassés - LP (2009)

Labels: Communication Is Not Words – Things Get Worse
Review by: Oli Saunders

This record arrived today along with a few others things from Communication Is Not Words, and the first thing I managed to do was accidentally cut a hole in a t-shirt when opening the parcel. Shit! It looks good and fits well too so I am a bit annoyed. My mum went ballistic once when I cut a hole in a pair of socks she had given me for Christmas when taking off the tags that came with them. Ten years later I haven’t learnt from these mistakes.

L’Homme Puma released a self titled record on CD a few years back, combining post-rock with audio samples and screamo. It’s some of the best music of that type out there I think, though sadly the style in general got pretty old very quickly for me. Too many one-dimensional bands repeating the same formula of slow and quiet build ups into loud and fast finales. The same goes for numerous post-rock bands without vocals too. Thankfully L’Homme Puma avoid this and just stick to writing damn good instrumental music that weaves around and stays interesting. They’ve dropped the vocals completely too, which allows the listener to concentrate on the instruments themselves more. It should certainly widen their audience base as I can imagine a lot of people being into this if they gave it a chance.

The record is pretty long, so long that they couldn’t fit it all on a 12” and the last two songs had to be put on a 7” that comes with it. Overall, this is very solid that I’d certainly recommend to fans of the genre.

25th October 2010