The Necessary Links That Make Up, Part One

This three-song, nine-minute follow-up to Story vs. Plot comes in highly creative packaging (a mini-reel-to-reel case). Last time, 1978-1980 Wire and experimentalist Lou Reed were heard in these Nordic anti-rockers, but they've gone further here. The vibrating, module-shaking guitars are teeth-chilling, dissonant, and bare like 1982 Sonic Youth, and on the instrumental "Amateur," the repetitive drum machine and looped eight-note strobe sounds are as itching as threateningly hypnotic as Suicide. David Abazovic chips in quietly disturbed vocals on "Play" and "Semi-Pro," and the effect is complementary — in part because his intonations are buried in a din of what sounds like a wire shorting, or a spastic alarm blaring in alternating frequencies against the buzz of a shaver. Utterly original, eerily affecting. ~ Jack Rabid, The Big Takeover, Rovi