cheval de frise
"Pastoral acoustic mathcore" was what someone wrote on the Cheval De Frise packet. Ah ha, ha, ha - I don't think so. Pastoral acoustic mathcore would be very nice - perhaps a Guitar Craft picking exercise, pared down by post-punk minimalism and softened by visions of green fields. Are Cheval De Frise like that? No. For the first seven minutes or so, Cheval De Frise seem absolutely demented. After that - and once the broken seizures of drumming and the intricate splatterwork of guitar has had time to get to work on your brain and your reflexes - you start to understand. Although your body will make the connection before your mind does. Right from the off, Bonvalet's playing is disturbingly wild; slamming down obsessively on a single note or isolated interval, or spasming music up, down or across the neck of the guitar. Beysselance's drumming is a boiling whirl of ideas and instincts, acted out with a brinksma cefulness, with enough breakneck substance both to keep the duo's momentum and to craze it with brilliant stress fractures.Evophonic Dann Chinn
la lame du mat
(stargazer)