Elektro Guzzi: Allegro EP
Pomelo
Elektro Guzzi follows up its 2011 full-length Parquet (on Macro) with a half-hour EP of four new jams, all of them in the group's trademark “live techno” style. Laid down at Vienna's Feedback Studios, the stellar set finds guitarist Bernhard Hammer, bassist Jakob Schneidewind, and drummer Bernhard Breuer once again ably assisted by co-producer Patrick Pulsinger.
The trio locks into the locomotive opener “Fat Pony” from the first pulsating moment to the last. Its gyroscopic swirl of relentless bass thunder, angular guitar stabs, and pounding drums leads into the tribal-funk stomp of “High Noon,” whose dub-inflected sky the group fills with atmospheric guitar washes for nine transporting minutes. The B-side's also-funky “Asteroid” takes the Elektro Guzzi into new territory when a wobbly, dubstep-styled bass line crosses paths with syncopated chords that hammer with kinetic insistence. At disc's end, “Jangu” takes us out with six hyperactive minutes of body-shaking tribal-techno at its motorik best.
Though the group's equally visceral and muscular tunes go down splendidly regardless of how they're produced, one's response to the music can't help but be positively enhanced by one's awareness of its live production—there's something about the idea of three musicians telepathically belting out such taut grooves that gives the band's music even greater appeal than it might otherwise have.November 2012