THREE SECOND KISS - Long Distance

Another warm return for Italian math-rock, following the far more sensational one by Uzeda in 2006. What also links the new Three Second Kiss to the Sicilian band (a true godmother of Italian post-rock) is the fact that on drums, alongside Sergio Carlini's guitar and Massimo Mosca's bass (also vocalist), is now the son of Agostino Tilotta (Uzeda's guitarist), Sacha, replacing outgoing member Lorenzo Fortini (who left the project in early 2006). The substance of the Three Second Kiss recipe, despite the five years separating "Music Out Of Music" (Slowdime, 2003) from "Long Distance", hasn't really changed: convoluted rhythms, stern post-hardcore bass, noise-rock electric guitar tending toward a kind of lyrical cacophony.

The problem with "Music" was the scarce cohesion between the ingredients: the end result tended toward a mere revision of the Shellac sound, rather than a sophisticated reworking of it. On "Long Distance" the band, if nothing else, wins out in coherence. Traces of Fugazi's "Repeater", of our own Rosolina Mar, of the obvious Shellac, and above all of Uzeda, peek through on the best-crafted tracks ("I Am A Wind" and "V Season"). "You Are The Music", with vocals filtered à la Big Black, a martial pace and a central tempo change, unveils the new drummer's Vinnie Signorelli-era-Unsane-style skills.

"Inexorable Sky", though deflated by June Of '44-style spoken-word delivery, ties the electric guitar's ramblings to its rocambolesque rhythmic shifts, but dangerously tends toward the genre's clichés, and "This Building Is Loud", in every respect similar to "Music Out Of Music" (slow and cathartic, as spastic as it is unmusical, with the usual quasi-progressive central shift à la Don Caballero), seems like little more than yet another test run for the new drummer.

Theirs is the same problem as Red Worms' Farm, only in reverse: too much artifice in the composition; of all their blustering little flourishes, only a few manage to work. The closing "Tarues" and "Guess You Bless This Mess" are cornucopias of previously-heard elements (with the odd furious crescendo), while among everything "Deviationism" manages to offer, only a syncopated charge following a post-rock attacca once again in Fugazi-esque style (around "Red Medicine") sticks in the memory, and "Dead Horse Swimming" offers their masterpiece of paradox: the most musical moment on the album is a brief a cappella chorus accompanied solely by the drummer's stick-clicks.

A non-chapter or super-appendix - reeking of inconclusiveness - in the Three Second Kiss saga, which often hinges on a monotonous and stubbornly pyrotechnic Carlini. When the three realize they're playing in the same band, they do manage a clever atmospheric streak, especially in certain interlude passages ("V Season"). Well-known production and loose sound direction courtesy of Steve Albini. Africantape, making their debut here, pull off a Pescara-to-Chicago round trip (a mishmash of elements drawn from 5ive Roses Promotion, Chevreuil, Sickroom Records and Sweep The Leg Johnny).

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08/05/2008