To my ears Teeth Of The Sea sound Post Rock gone sci-fi.
If you like music with a soundtrack ear for scope and vistas with depth and ideas then Teeth Of The Sea are worth exploring.
MASTER is a truly original, visceral, fascinating album. An ever shifting, fully realised world of sound and ideas.
There are two truly standout songs on the album:
‘Reaper’ is where the album really starts. Building up piece by piece, starting with a cheesy 90s drum machine beat are added synth washes, treated mutant vocals, rattles of percussion, stabs and throbs of more electronics. Like the idling machines of some gargantuan machine. Past 3 minutes and the bass enters the equation like the smooth flow of subway trains beneath a city. Past the 5 minute mark and squalls of metal-ish guitar finally land. A stunning, powerful, epic song.
‘Responder’ starts off pulsing like the intro music of an 80s thriller (probably directed by Michael Mann and shot though a blue filter) before a plaintiff spaghetti western trumpet enters the fray. Heavily distorted words filter through the ether. Then the machinery breaks down. Then the gears start to work again and the songs transforms into a powerful dance beat rave up and the trumpet riffs while guitar screams noise. You never thought a trumpet could be used to such startling, euphoric effect?
MASTER is best viewed as a whole though, ‘The Servant’ sees the combination of feedback with looped trumpet blasts. This is one example of how Teeth Of The Sea mixes noises and sounds no one dared, nor dreamed possible. ‘Pleides Underground’ smacks of the Radiophonic Workshop. ‘Siren Spectre’ is haunting and ethereal with snatches of Morse Code. ‘Put Me On Your Shoulders So I Can See The Rats’ is plain creepy.
MASTER evokes sprawling city-scapes of the future and explores this city from the freeways populated with flying cars to the subways to the back alleys. Lost voices of lost souls can be heard, lost humans in the digital age. There is such a wide array of emotions and moods and ideas here you could listen to it a hundred times without fully understanding the scope and depth of this work.
Perfect for soundtracking novels by Philip K Dick and Iain M Banks.
Challenging? Yes? Rewarding? Definitely.
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