This is the debut release for the noisy improvisational trio from Holland whose name apparently means "your mortgage advice". Consisting of 11 tracks, the album focuses on intense driving melees of dissonant instrumentation.
The opening track consists mainly of a few alternating thrashed guitar chords, incessant drumming and violent bass work. Occasionally drawing back, the overall impression is of the moments before a car crash suspended sonically and stretched. A similar style is adopted on the second track but "Bela" takes a more cerebral route, with some vital clanging percussion competing for attention with multi-tracked guitars. Its almost like they took Pink Floyd's opening clock chime cacophony from "Time" and manipulated all the sounds to extract extended harmonics from them.
We return to the grating industrial dissonance which underpins much of the album in the next piece with a grungy bass guitar battling with off-sync percussion and intense strangulated guitar chords. The high end treble of "De Kandidaten" becomes aurally painful toward the end. Track 6 is a lengthy piece clocking in at nearly 12 minutes and thankfully does attempt to allow the listener space to appreciate what's going on. And what's going on is a splendid bit of sonic architecture, more Captain Beefheart than anyone with the name of Wagner. Crashing atonal guitar chords are bent and twisted in multiple layers reminding me of the multi-guitar effects of Raoul Bjorkenheim's Apocolypso album without the polish. Interludes of extended and creaking guitar chords and spluttering percussion break up into more rhythmic segments. The closing segment has the bell like guitar sounding like the hunchback of Notre Dame on the rampage.
At this point in proceedings you start to feel like you've heard each new track before, the lack of a recognisable structure and the limitations of the instrumental mix making it difficult to trace any development. "Rennen Ruud" does seem to allow for more melodic structure for the guitar in this dirge-like piece. There are then some short but interesting percussive electronic spasms in the track before "Zonder Laura", in which the band make a genuine attempt to create atmospherics and use the guitar in more experimental ways. For me it's the rather monosyllabic way in which the instrument has been used up to here which is the biggest disappointment about the work. For this reason Laura is perhaps the best piece on the album for me. "De Hit" just beats your brains out with the return of the high-end strafing guitar and the last track does more of the same with gusto - Punk-jazz if there is such a thing; ugly and brutal.
The album is interesting and challenging at times but just too grating to ever see the inside of my cd player again I'm afraid.
Track Listing
1. De Magneet
2. & doublures (part 2)
3. Bela
4. (d turpin/b. rogers)
5. De Kandidaten
6. Helmut Wagner
7. Rennen Ruud
8. & doublures (part 1)
9. Zonder Laura
10. De Hit
11. Iedereen moet wel
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