In keeping with great vocal less acts/releases today, here is the debut release from Melbourne duo Fraudband. Imaginatively entitled First Songs, the five tracks on display offer a brutal, minimal/maximal approach, driving by pummelling drums, an unrelenting rhythm that the guitar runs roughshod over, a charging bull. But there is a balletic kineticism at work here that underpins it all - its the work of two guys who are intricately dancing with one another, weaving their disparate instruments into a seamless whole, a weapon of mass disruption. Think early Love Of Diagrams or Faspeedelay, yet with a harder, Fugazi-centric bent (yet on 'Tangled Up' we go into more outback-tinged fare, something that an early, more frenetic Dirty Three would have approved of). The sixteen minute ramble 'I tried To Tell You, A Few Times' is my favourite though - but I'm a sucker for those kinds of things... Out next month on new label Kasmuen Records, First Songs is a great document of a duo already setting sight on the stars, if only to send them crashing harmoniously to the ground. Preorder it here.
