New Brutalism - 1999-2001: A Diagram Without Scale Or Dimension/Structural Gymnastics/+1

Label: The Great Vitamin Mystery

Year: 2002

By request. please do listen up for the greatest Midwestern noise rock record of the early 1990's not actually performed, recorded, or released by a Midwestern noise rock band in the early 1990's. Hey everybody, it's New Brutalism from....Knoxville, Tennessee? Fuck yeah! New Brutalism, from motherfucking Knox-vegas! 

This record is the compilation of two older 12"s the band put out, but that had since gone out of print (plus one unreleased track). I'm not sure how many waves they have made outside of the South, but can assure you they aren't making that many waves here in the South, and that's puzzling. It's puzzling because this band hand crafts their own indestructible aluminum instruments in a pursuit for the purest tones and sounds available. And then, with those instruments they play homage to the Touch and Go heyday of wiry, twitching, plodding, beautiful noise rock. Think, Tar, Big Black, Arcwelder, and the like. Big dogs you know? A maybe, just maybe it's because they got a couple of real nobodies named Bob Weston and Steve Albini to record these records, I don't know, but they sound fucking tits. Big, big sound, thudding, spacious drums, and attacking guitars slicing through. It really does take you back to an older style. Nice.

All that being said, New Brutalism aren't just a "retro revival" novelty, they are genuine fans of a genre and are using their obviously encyclopedic knowledge of that genre to make new, exciting versions of those old sounds. Fucking great stuff. I wish they'd get off their asses and play some shows. I even asked them to play in Atlanta with my old band once and they said, "sure, let me get back to you"....story of my life, I never heard back.

DL