Labels: File 13
Review by: Andy Malcolm
Lawks. Who’d have thought that File-13 was a label that ever put out the Current / Chino Horde split, based on their y2k lineup at least. Guess tastes change, people move on, and File-13 dips back into the 80’s again.
National Skyline are ex-members of a couple of cult indie rock bands, I won’t go into details here. And this 4 song EP is a 26 minute long shoegaze into past decades and past styles of music. Opening track “October” is mid-tempoed and laid back, vaguely spacey at times in a Blue Ontario way too, also makes nice use of some synths and keyboards. Following on from that is the groove-driven “Identity Crisis” which sounds more like a Beck song gone sort of wrong. Vocals attempt to go for the slack “don’t give a shit” vibe, and kind of fall flat for me. This is seriously not a good track, and at this stage, I am coming close to driving a big nail through the CD due to it’s mediocrity.
Luckily, there is still 18 minutes left on this CD, and there are 2 more tracks. Which pretty much save this record from the nail thing. “Ghosts” drifts on with minimal atmospherics and a distant drum beat, making me rub my chin thoughtfully, realise I need a shave, and then think to myself “hmm, Antarctica”. The guy even sounds a lot like the bloke from Antarctica who is not Eric. Very moody and swirly, with some tinkled piano too. It fits very much into that “dream-o’ style of bands like the previously mentioned Blue Ontario too. The EP winds up on the 13 (THIRTEEN) minute, “Karolina II”. Lots more electron-arctica on here, as the band revel in that 80’s thing one last time. Uh, for some reason the vocals sound like U2 on this song, scary. Anyway, it lopes repetitively on it’s way, riding on the rising and falling drumbeats, guitars and synths. And the final 5 minutes are an instrumental drone in the vein of Mogwai or something, it’s pretty well done. Overall, good track.
On the CD cover are pictures of roads, and it has those streaked headlights effects, you know what I mean, don’t you? Please? Anyway, the music sounds like it would fit when they show those speeded up shots on TV, and lots of cars go past very very fast. Yeah. Only 2 out of 4 songs = good, but they’re enough to carry it to the following”¦