Pitchblende - Gygax! (special)

SKU Matador 190
Third, final and best album by this Washington DC-based mathrock band from the 90s. DC has never been a big mathrock or brutal-prog town (too bad, but that's the way it is - you want agressive, complex music, head 40 miles north to Baltimore!), but 18-20 years ago or so, when Don Cab was ruling the roost, Pitchblende came, saw and even sort of conquered, releasing this album on the eternally hip Matador label. I even saw them once and was really impressed. This is now many years old and yes, it is a sound of another time. But it's still a good listen and you can hear what the cutting edge of rock music complexity was at the time, influenced by Sonic Youth guitar tunings and Don Cab mathy-ness.

"Pitchblende Quartet was a Washington, D.C.-based math rock band whose only fault was that its sound, while not really derivative of any one artist, wasn't terribly distinctive. On the surface, Gygax is just another solidly constructed but rather ordinary-sounding math rock record: it has Slint's chiming, clean-toned guitar harmonics; Rodan's chunky, dissonant chords; and barked, tag-team vocals that sound a bit like the Volcano Suns. But as a sort of primer on all the things math rock can be, it's just about unbeatable. Pitchblende demonstrates mastery of eerie, tense, space rock-like buildups ("Squeezin's From the Mole Jug"), ultra-complex rhythms ("Mercator Projection"), and pounding post-hardcore breaks ("Sideling Hill"). Best of all, the group throws in enough head-turning half-hooks to keep the album from feeling like an exercise. Gygax is one of the most consistently enjoyable math rock records of the mid-'90s."-Charlie Wilmoth



Bookmark and Share
  • LabelMatador
Your Price $7.00
Qty

Customer Reviews


Write A Review