By: Chris Ball
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I hope the band will forgive me when I say that Gum Takes Tooth is essentially a one man band with knobs on. Drummer Thomas Fuglesang’s kit is wired up to all sorts of weird electronics and the noise he triggers is sort of live mixed, distorted and generally fucked with by Jussi Brightmore, who also adds vocals. Their sound is yet another triumph of artistry over limited resources, such a common happenstance amongst modern bands searching for ways to make their lives hard and their art interesting.
The first two tracks on Silent Cenotaph, originally released in 2011 but now available on vinyl for the first time, are intent on making the listener’s life hard too, with opener ‘Young Mustard’ attacking like primitive black metal riding shotgun on the kinetic rhythms of Lightning Bolt (a frequent touchstone, unsurprisingly). The track does though have a centre of gorgeous twinkly electronica before heading back into furious noise. However ‘Strychnine Motive’ has no desire to sooth and is a manic fuzzy din for its entirety, Brightmore’s harsh shredded vocals lunging at you from between thunderous drums and strafing electronica.
If you have survived the bands baptism of fire you will find a rich diversity – Gum Takes Tooth stretching the very limits of the possibilities of their sound. On several tracks they create a sort of world music for an alternative universe – ‘Nomad/Monad’ is all trippy cowbells, like a mild acid trip on the Steppe. You can almost smell the yak. ‘Peace in Your Middle East’ would sit fabulously on the compilation album (that I just invented) ‘Sinister Sounds on Safari’, featuring tribal drums mixed with a strange selection of almost Clanger-ish sound effects. These songs, along with closing monastic space jam ‘Hermaphrodite and Nourishment’ bring to mind the clever fakery of Master Musicians of Bukkake, who invent fantastical ritualistic music from an imagined past.
‘Tankjott’ is perhaps the apogee of the bands noisy output and serves as a brutal wake up after those mellower moments – a kick drum lead kraut/psych rock freakout with extra fuzz and bonus bleeps on top. At one point is sounds like an emergency stations alarm on the Starship Enterprise before dropping the sound to virtually nothing and then building up into all out intergalactic robot wars.
‘Tankjott’ although certainly heavy, is not as challenging as ‘Rise From The Peat and Walk’ on which Gum Takes Tooth seem to have taken all the unwanted noise; the glitches, the echoes, the feedback, the thump and screech of heavy industry, accidentally captured from far way through studio walls, and marshalled it and pushed it to the forefront. Imagine the most vicious Ministry track being played backwards at half speed and you’re getting there. On the first couple of listens this track melded with the first two and gave the impression of one long dissonant assault on humanity. Repeated listens have revealed the impressive breadth and invention Gum Takes Tooth have managed to summon from their potentially meagre and limited resources.
Definitely one for those who live in the freak zone.
