Tesseract
Perspective
Century Media (2012)
TesseracT made quite a splash in the djent scene with their debut last year, the aptly titled One. Though the album itself wasn't particularly impressive, it still struck a chord with a lot of listeners and garnered the band quite a following. It's no surprise they've rushed to produce something to follow it up, and that follow up is 2012's EP Perspective.If there is one thing I cannot fault the band for, it's doing the same thing twice. Sure, the bulk of Perspective consists of rerecorded songs from One, but the band reimagines them with an “acoustic” set up (which basically means just acoustic guitars and lighter drums). I readily admit, that was a very unexpected surprise, but what's really interesting about Perspective is how well TesseracT's rhythmically-based djent sound actually translates into this instrumentation—the thick, muted strumming of acoustic guitars actually makes a good substitute for the downtuned, near atonal noise of eight-string guitars. Instead of just mere novelties, the rerecordings here are actually on par with their originals.“Perfection” in particular sounds very good in this stripped-down instrumentation; being mostly an ambient, vocal-focused interlude means it doesn't have much to lose from the lighter guitars, but a lot to … Read more
Aesop Rock
Skelethon
Rhymesayers (2012)
The big complaint since Aesop Rock’s breakthrough, Labor Days, seems to be that he hasn’t had the memorable singles. At … Read more
Mission Of Burma
Unsound
Fire (2012)
In the early eighties when the Boston post-punk band Mission of Burma announced their decision to stop playing and recording … Read more
