One Unique Signal: One Unique EP

One Unique Signal… A band who phonically speaking, are truly and always one unique signal conducted from the minds of seven people, one of them on drums, another on ‘drone’, two of them on bass, and three of them sharing the roles of guitars whilst one of these three is in control of the vocal duties. Being said that there are seven members, it’s probably pointless to point out that they are one cacophony of a wall of sound that is densely psychedelic, and dynamically droning. This review is on their sixth and latest release, “Hey Alchemist/Neuralgia“, which is the bands first release on a seven-inch vinyl that has been released by Genepool/Universal records along with four of their other albums, one of the other five having been self-distributed (something I had to mention as I find this sort of thing highly admirable). In this release, one may hear the influences as I did, of groups such as Joy Division, Telescopes, Loop, Can, and Sonic Youth, in the sense of jerky and hooky rhythms with repetitive structures (repetition seems to be a key part of their sound however due to the amount of variations on the sweltering sound of the guitars it appears to me to be hardly noticeable) that seem to be played a bit differently throughout each individual structure, as each guitar joins in and out every now again at a sort of sound-scape, this is where the drone sound hits heavily.

In the opening track, “Hey Alchemist”, I feel as if the alchemist is saying “Hey you?” as the fuzzy wah swirls within your ears and into your mind, it’s easy to see how this music could become so introspective that you notice the true alchemical nature of yourself, to the point that the title “Hey Alchemist” could even be saying hey to the listener. The track starts of with a very nostalgic and euphoric riff that goes on for about two minutes along with the vocals over it in this section; by the three minute point it comes to a riff that continues until about the five minute mark where the drums fade out and from that point on, it’s pure ambiance, noise, and drone that come to a remarkable fade-out which bids the song farewell.

I find that I must add a preliminary remark before I go on to talk about the second and last song of this magnificent EP, “Neuralgia”, and that remark is: for a song entitled after the disease neuralgia, a disease in which its victims feel pain in one or more nerves without any excitation of the brains pain receptors whatsoever, usually caused by the change in neurological function or structure, I find the music for this piece absolutely and thoroughly poetic for that which it is entitled after. This song has one structure, one single structure which seems to be consistently evolving and changing all through-out the song, it is totaly drone and I personally find it to be psycically magnetic. It’s hard to put into words the ideas one could conjure upon the thought of this song. I did not notice that there was one riff until I actually skipped through the track to see when changes occur. In short, very short, this song is a psychedelic fluctuation.

I’ve not listened a great deal to this group outside this EP, however, from what I’ve sampled I find this to be their most balanced release yet. These very talented, and highly individualistic musicians, shall surely find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow they’ve created. You can order the record, the artwork is absolutely amazing, at their label’s site Genepoolrecords along with their other albums that can be heard on youtube, myspace, as well as last.fm (which I believe even has a couple free downloads). If I were you, I would definitely not only ackowledge the bands existance, but I would embrace it; if you decide to do so a good place to start would be the band’s Website. I think this is proven by my writing of this article. Thanks for reading and do yourself a favour and check these guys out!