A New Silent Corporation - Everything Is Exactly As It Seems (2009) (AWESOME !!!)

Genre : Post-rock, Electronica, Shoegaze, Experimental, Italy
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Tracklist :

01. Time Discipline
02. Hiver
03. Will Noise
04. Reprise
05. WOTGG
06. Maple

If you are looking for a description of A New Silent Corporation’s sound, and are familiar with the works of Maybeshewill, then you need investigate no farther than that. Though this band is from Italy, rather than the United Kingdom, and is putting out their first album now, rather than in 2006, the differences seem to stop there. Both play a similar brand of 65daysofstatic-influenced neo-post-rock, where electronics live side-by-side with standard guitars/bass/drums and spoken-word clips of people decrying the status quo. If you count yourself among Maybeshewill’s fans (and the band certainly has a fair amount), then you should probably run out and grab Everything is Exactly as it Seems right away; the album sounds nearly exactly like where Maybeshewill might have gone after last year’s Not For Want of Trying (as opposed, that is, to where they did go). And if you aren’t among the Leicester-based band’s fans, then there’s probably not much that will win you over here.

For the rest of you, those who are unfamiliar with Maybeshewill, A New Silent Corporation presents a debut post-rock album with just enough pizzazz to inspire interest, but not enough to maintain it. If there is little to overtly criticize, it would seem that there is also little to explicitly praise. The track lengths are appropriate, the instrumentation is well done, and the samples, though perhaps adding rather little of substance to the music, at least do not intrude annoyingly upon our listening experience. Moments of excitement exist, and the opening track “Time Discipline” was rightly recommended as a TSB Track of the Week a few weeks back. Opening with record scratches set against developing guitar arpeggios before breaking off around the two-minute mark to move into a more standard post-rock style build-up, the track is nothing we haven’t heard before, but it shows a very nice development of technique.

At the risk of sounding excessively snarky, Everything is Exactly as it Seems is perhaps the most honestly-titled album I’ve come across in quite some time. The album carries itself with almost no pretension, and makes no claims for being more than what it appears at the surface. If A New Silent Corporation (which, incidentally, is a great band name) wishes to leave a more lasting mark upon the instrumental rock community, then they will need to develop their own personal approach to the genre. As it is, we’re left with a solid neo-post-rock debut, but one which could easily be mistaken for outtakes from another already established band (which, in turn, has been accused of being no more than a collection of 65daysofstatic outtakes). In a way, the album is like a reproduction painting of Starry Night which one might hang on the wall: nice technique, zero personality. Is this album bad? Certainly not. But is it any good? Well, I suppose so; but I can do no more than that.

by Tom Butcher thesilentballet

[me]Damn, this is good. It's reminding me a bit of 65dos. But not as heavy nor fast.