THRANGH - Erzefilisch

Thrangh were formed in Rome in the first half of the 2000s. They're a combo in search of the boldest stylistic legacies, unconcerned with notions of completed or even remotely regular forms, who throw themselves into endless cacophonous devastation without a single pause for breath. Even their live sets (the one from Arezzo Wave in July 2006 was remarkable, ed.) are built on sprawling improvised suites, driven forward by mangled reworkings of Ornette Coleman's ground-zero free jazz, the battered inserts of Naked City, and the most torrential (and razor-precise) brand of progressive hardcore in the vein of Dillinger Escape Plan or NoMeansNo. Perhaps only their fellow countrymen Anatrofobia have pushed interpretive radicalism this far.

In 2005, self-released, came "Il castigo esemplare", their first demo (actually a full-fledged album in every respect, featuring the lengthy "I"), but it's only with their proper debut, "Erzefilisch", that Thrangh really lay their cards on the table. In "Cobra verde" (already present on the first EP, but revised and corrected here), the band combines the agitation of a riff in complex time, a sprawling instrumental stasis (almost Ecm-like), a heavy distortion with sax digressions (echoes of "21st Century Schizoid Man"), a tempo change bringing in a new, demonic Canterbury-style idea, and a deranged Zorn-style speed-metal outburst. The concept of a musical body in perpetual, repellent and entirely gratuitous harmonic flux is reaffirmed repeatedly across "Sagapa", a chill-out piece shattered by collective improvisation and syncopated funk-rumba, "Asa Nisi Masa", with its Zu-style sax and ragged drum'n'bass, and "Camadogi", a flowing jazz-rock composition bursting with an inordinate amount of ideas and jams chasing each other tirelessly.

The interludes (the “O_O” series and the closing “=:|”) feel like their own personal take on Swans' “Loop” tracks around the time of “Body To Body, Job To Job”, or on Satie's “Enfantillages Pittoresques”: the first is bass-driven and wreathed in toxic clouds of sax and feedback, with stumbling drums; the second is an atonal sketch; the third a threadbare swing fit for some shady piano bar; the fourth an experiment in the low-end registers of instrumental sound effects (complete with didgeridoo). The last one, a psychotic crescendo disfigured by electronics, is the album's catastrophic close.

Rome, Caput Jazzcore. It sounds a bit much to say, but they brought it on themselves. A passionate, technically stubborn band, but – above all – it's the possessed drummer Tommaso Moretti who deserves a special mention. The instrumental blend is still rough around the edges, built up through excess or sheer accumulation, and – to top it all off – its strength lies precisely in never growing tiresome, no matter how many times you spin it. In the middle stretch (especially the title track) the ideas get rinsed a bit naively, with dead spots and some rather superficial flexing; still, it's hard to deny the creative reach of this small meta-rock experiment. Thrangh is a name with possible onomatopoeic traces; the artwork, on the other hand, offers no escape.

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04/09/2007