Complex Full of Phantoms – By The End Of Tonight/Tera Melos split

It also sounds like somebody has chucked a bag of robots into a river. I couldn’t ask for more.

 

It also sounds like somebody has chucked a bag of robots into a river. I couldn’t ask for more.

 

 

I didn’t know what the hell this was when I received the package in the post. I’d seen pictures of the cover in magazines and just thought the cover looked like a nasty bird eating a crudely drawn mini-egg and never given it a second thought, but when I stuck the CD in the computer and loaded it up, it was a pleasant surprise to hear something that "pleased my ears"on first listen.

 

The first track – at a measly 41 seconds – acts more as an intro to the amazingly titled second track Philthy Collins. With guitar licks reminiscent of Hot Club De Paris and speedy, rolling drums, this thing just aims to please you. It’s much of the same sort of thing for the third track Jealous Of A Ghost. This song takes a harder rock feeling than the previous with mini solos and crunching guitars all over the shop. This all being instrumental, of course it has to have plenty of change to make it entertaining. You wouldn’t want to listen to this if you weren’t used to good music; some would just discard it as weird and to a certain extent it is, but it’s there to enjoy and dance around with.

 

Cold Hands offers time for a relaxation session though; echo filled drums and arpeggiated swooping chords show off this band is far from a one trick pony, If only they would show off this trick more often rather then the last two tracks on their half of the CD.

 

I must admit that when I listened to this first I didn’t realise this thing was even a split CD but when the Tera Melos side starts that’s what inspired me to do some research and find out what this was all about.

 

Like the first "half" of the CD,  the band start with another under a minute introduction (555-9676); but Tera Melos’ attempt really does seem to hold it’s own as a singular track rather than something lumped onto the start of another. It goes, it slows down, it stops. It also sounds like somebody has chucked a bag of robots into a river. I couldn’t ask for more. The sure-fire highlight of this side is track nine When Worms Learn To Fly. There’s no change with the stop/start rhythms but the real surprise comes when the track breaks down to a slightly dancey, almost garage drum beat; moody keyboards are coupled with the polite whispering vocals of guitarist Nick Reinhart. It doesn’t sound like it should work but the added instrumentation makes this sound like a demented fairground organ and even odder, almost festive.

 

The CD is only available to buy online or through mail order which I doubt will harm it in anyway as this really is a niche thing… in a good way.If only the cover didn’t look like a nasty bird eating a crudely drawn mini-egg

 

Words: Smoggy