I think we said this again recently, but we’re completely baffled as to where international artists get our contact info. Nonetheless, we’re always pleased to hear all kinds of noisy shit from… wherever.

According to the press release they sent us, this short ep ‘Die Leere’ is Girls In Synthesis follow up to their full length album ‘The Rest is Distraction’. And it’s much different in a number of ways that we wouldn’t know b/c we haven’t heard the initial lp. The PR then goes on to describe a laundry list of differing factors in terms of the atmosphere of this experimental noise release AND a laundry of genres they should be most associated with AND existential factors they explore on this new ep. The whole thing reminds me of J. Eric Smith’s old assertion that ‘these bands are barely out of the garage and they’ve got a host of theories on what they’re doing, going to do, have done, beliefs, philosophies, etc.’

See first paragraph for explanation — we may not be as sophisticated or have as much sophistry (is that a word?) as our contemporaries across the pond, but we’ve got our ears and our formative years. We listened to the ep. With the exception of the second track (a ‘dub’ of the first and the 4th “Against the Seething” we wouldn’t call this experimental noise music. We’d call it kickass post-punk noise rock (deathrock’s fine too, we don’t really care to put too fine a point on it — that’s for real music critics to do).

“I know no other way” is like a lo-fi Peter Murphy track meets some obscure punk track from The Sound. Solid track through rhythm section sets the base for what is essentially an all out assault of guitars and sing-screaming on the sense that everything’s ok. They put it more intellectually as ‘the physicality of human anxiety’ — again, we find ourselves in a situation where we’re made to feel like Americans and say ‘ok dude, whatever you say. We THINK we hear what you’re saying, and we like it.’

The follow-up dub is pretty much what you’d expect of what a post-punk band would call ‘dub’; essentially an extended remix with a lot of effects and isolated passages.

‘Sinking Feeling’ again reminds us of old Bauhaus/early Love and Rockets, and another driving noise variant therewith that is very similar in feeling to “I know no other way” though of course the melody’s different… in a way that probably wouldn’t be noticed by the casual listener. In addition to the lightning paced delivery of English accentuated heavily affected sing-speak-screaming common to a Bauhaus track like ‘In the Flat Field’, one may also relate this far more contemporary track to some of their more contemporary, very popular peers across the pond like Metz that are creating driven hard hitting post noise rock in a similar vein.

Not the case with the final track “Against the Seething”, a rather uninspired take at perhaps an ancient Cabaret Voltaire or Throbbing Gristle track that I typically would skip. A simple though intense pulse of synthesized noise bass lines and highly e(a?)ffected higher register lines accompany what sounds like a reading of a poem in a night club. It is intense but, again, in a way that doesn’t interest me more than once.

An interesting if mixed follow up to an album we’ve never heard and a band and/or promotional company (because these things often go the way of an overenthusiastic latter the former knows nor cares anything about) that’s a bit too into defining themselves for our taste. If they drop the pretention they could have some really good singles…