Olimpia Splendid (Photo by Antti Ahonen)
Things are getting heavy for Getintothis’ Patrick Clarke this week, with three colossal walls of sound from France, Denmark and Finland on the cards in his latest round-up of all the new music you need.
We like to mix things up here at Unknown Pleasures corner (in many ways the IT Crowd-style weirdo basement of Getintothis towers, only with more military jackets and gold eyeliner), and over the last 37 weeks we’ve always tried to keep it varied. We’ve had barrages of Japanese noise, heartstring-tugging folk-pop and a shitload of psychedelia, but this week, well, it’s just too damn hot for our freckle-faced liking outside, so to compensate we bring you the very finest anti-summer anthems, a tri-national assault of mud, scuzz and gloom with which to beat a frowning retreat.
To begin, there’s Finnish trio Olimpia Splendid, whose self-titled album is due to drop early in July from Fonal Records. Ahead of the release we’re treated to two pure monoliths of a teaser in Cebe and Kalle Kämmenellä, where thick, heavy-hitting grooves of viscous, lurching bass underpin the hypnotic detachment that seeps through their sinister growls, chants and screeches of vocal.
The former is an unrelenting pummel of bludgeoning riffs, a menacing refrain buried amongst the scuzz, while the latter sees the group at their most off-centre, hypnotic post-punk loops the ideal base for the Helsinki threesome’s screams and snarls.
Noisey‘s French counterpart meanwhile have recently debuted the new album from goth-rock foursome Strasbourg, who hail from… Bordeaux. The LP, Fruit de la Passion, is an obscure affair, somewhere between Nick Cave‘s The Birthday Party in it’s thick squalls of ear-clenching feedback and Bauhaus‘ undercutting grooves.
Galope is magnificent in its confrontation, a squealing careen of detached post-punk punches of drum and guitar and Warsaw vocal, while the title-track is a searing sci-fi soundscape of petrifying proportions, yet it’s opener Vague À L’Ame that’s the standout, relentlessly propulsive in its absolute opacity.
Copenhagen four-piece Eeerie Glue, finally, take the My Bloody Valentine approach to their musical bludgeon on the (quite brilliantly) anachronistically-titled La La La, a grinding wall of monolithic guitar whirls. The group have an album due this summer and prior EP’s such as the excellent Lazy Laments suggest a healthy dose of dream-pop lo-fi among the barbarism of their noise (well worth checking out if this one ain’t your thing). However it shapes up, it’ll be intriguing to say the least.
