By Rich Collins
At last, psychedelic rockers, and firm Echoes and Dust favourites, Teeth of the Sea are throwing a new album at us entitled Master. These four rather skinny chaps have gone on quite a journey since I first discovered them back in 2009. Moving from being a quirky post rock band to a… well I’m not even sure what they are today really. Gigwise they have moved on from playing empty rooms in the back of unknown London pubs to touring Europe (including spots at Roadburn and Incubate) and even a sold out show at the Electric Ballroom supporting Goat.
Each release has been a massive step forward, their 2010 offering Your Mercury was a kind of looping, cut and shut, warped space record which broke boundaries and can still be regularly found spinning around on my record player. We’re now three years on I’m thrilled and relieved to announce they have done it again in the boundary pushing department, more so than ever before… and by God it’s good.
It starts off with a creepy German sample before launching into a euphoric disco number entitled ‘Reaper’. That’s right I said disco, disco that fucking rocks. It then morphs into a power kraut rock song and it sinks in you are dealing with an entire new listening experience. How do they achieve this?
Technology of course. Teeth of the Sea really know how to play with technology, the most technological band I certainly listen to. In fact, they probably watched Iron Man 3 and thought it was some documentary about a struggling blacksmith in Victorian times.
TEETH OF THE SEA - MASTER from Rocket Recordings on Vimeo.
When I on the verge of passing out in the twilight hours at ArcTangent Festival, Dan, the editor of Echoes and Dust, was playing this album outside his tent and described it as a "disco album for the end of the world" and I could not put it better myself. By the time ‘Black Strategy’ fully kicks in you’ll know exactly what he means… they really don’t skimp on the disco apocalypse theme.
This new direction towards a more electro sound and errr… the apocalypse has basically opened up so many areas for them to explore and boy oh boy have they covered a lot of ground. That’s not to say they have gone fully techno or anything, there are heavy patches too, Jimmy’s riff on ‘Plediades Spectre: Phase 1/Phase 2’ is reminiscent of early Metallica and pockets of sounds such like this all contribute in making Master such a vibrant piece of work.
There’s also more challenging bits to this record, it goes experimental and dark. Sometimes you might feel you are listening to Throbbing Gristle and wonder what the hell is going on when you are sinking into some weird industrial worm holes; it’s like it’s trying to visit every part of your brain and do some kind of science experiment in it. There’s also softer and delicate times when you can hear hints of ‘Fever Ray’ and ‘Umberto’, which all really works and there is nothing you can do apart from admire the mix of styles they have managed to mash together with such class.
When listening to Master it almost feels like kraut rock has been revived and brought bang up to date, like these four chaps have grabbed it by the nuts and showed us what we should be listening to in 2013. If this was literally a ‘disco album for the end of the world’, things wouldn’t be so bad as you would have this amazing record to listen to when you are locked in your house watching zombies trying to crawl through the window.
As for final track ‘Responder’, well it’s the ultimate finale, I’m not going to post any kind of musical spoiler by describing it but just get this record.
