It’s not often that an all-instrumental outfit make waves on a wider scale, but the spotlight’s certainly on Northern Irish quartet AND SO I WATCH YOU FROM AFAR right now. They’ve already made one critically-acclaimed album, opened for the lauded Them Crooked Vultures across Europe and even have a Russian tour lined up for early in 2011.
So ASIWYFA are literally going places, though it’s not hard to hear why when you engage with their new single ‘Straight through the Sun’. Although it is, in effect, supercharged Math-Rock, it’s the sort of disciplined pummelling that soon sets these boys apart from the geeky pack. While it jumps through all manner of rhythmic hoops along the way, there’s a wonderfully weedy ‘ice-cream van’ guitar figure which keeps recurring, some fantastically growly bass playing and phenomenal drumming to power it all along. I would normally scoff at the idea of a ‘radio edit’ where such an outfit is concerned, but I’m not so sure here. I’d certainly love to hear this cannoning out of t’wireless and belting me around the chops in the middle of the afternoon.
Nominal B-side ‘Without a Fuckin’ Scratch’ initially lulls you into a false sense of security with its’ plangent guitars. By around the minute mark it’s starting the get a little more aggressive, but the band has the patience to play a waiting game and three and a half minutes roll by before the sonic Vesuvius finally blows and white hot sonic lava comes spilling down around your ears.
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While both tracks bring names like Oceansize and Cave In readily to mind, I should stress they do so very favourably indeed. And So I Watch You From Afar operate with a name suggesting they are outsiders looking in, but if they can keep this kind of pressure up, they won’t be the jealous outsiders pressing their fingers on the industry’s windows, they’ll be smashing the feckers to bits. Mark my words.
Smalltown America Records online
And so I Watch You From Afar on Myspace
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