Lo-Fi Sucks! - Temporary Burn-Out

  by Mark Rowland

published: 21 / 4 / 2003

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If you hadn't already guessed, the name's ironic. Lo-Fi Sucks ! specialise in breezy, warm lo-fi music, though not too lo-fi. On 'Temporary Burn-out', the song isn't pushed back to make way for pretentious noodling. Opening track 'Disappeared 2' is surrounded in bird song, making the tune a bit less obvious, and '(...pool?)' is just a bunch of different loops played backwards, but that's really about it. The second track '67-73' is when 'Temporary Burn-Out' really starts, with stop/start picked guitar and great vocals from Doc (all the members of Lo-Fi Sucks! use pseudonyms: Doc,Monsieur, Buzzi and MadtP respectively, all multi-instrumentalists). This really sets the sound of 'Temporary Burnout', warm, uplifting, tuneful post-rock music with a variety of influences. Tracks like 'All Beautiful Angels', with its trip-hop-y drum loop beneath a Pavement meets Low melody and guitar line, is a great example of how Lo-Fi Sucks! create their music. The band members are obviously lovers of many different types of music, and although their sound has its roots in lo-fi and post-rock music, it also contains many other elements: folk, trip-hop, electronica, jazz, rock. If these boys like it, it'll appear in their own music in some form or another. This makes their music difficult to pin down, which is a good thing. Every track has a slightly different style to the other tracks, but still have a coherent sound that is very much Lo-Fi Sucks! Typical sixties folk accompaniment instruments like organ, xylophone, vibes and even maracas are used to flesh out their sound. The guitar styles used range from gentle picking to stabbing jazz chords to fuzzed up feedback, and drum loop and samples rear their heads every now and again. A couple of the band's song titles even pay tribute to their influences. 'Me and Nick Drake' (for those of you that don't know, a sixties folk singer, now dead. Elements of Drake's music can be heard in the sound of Lo-fi Sucks!) and 'He played Steve Shelley's Kit' (Steve Shelley is the drummer in Sonic Youth. Funnily enough, Lo-Fi Sucks! know someone that played his drumkit) both have fantastic tunes. 'He Played...' uses a laid back, jazzy chord progression and muffled vocals, while 'Me and Nick Drake' uses gentle guitars and a wonderful vocal hook, with a fuzzy electronic noise slowly building up around both of them. This willingness to try different things and different styles within their own sound makes comparisons to bands like Low and Pavement inevitable, but Lo-Fi Sucks! sound is definitely their own.

Track Listing:-

1 Disappeared 2
2 67-73
3 All Beautiful Angels
4 But I Feel Fine Thank You
5 Disappeared
6 (…Pool?)
7 Drop-Outs Bus
8 He Played Steve Shelley’s Kit
9 Me And Nick Drake
10 Little Wonder’s Lost
11 No Place Like Home
12 Declaration of Indiependence Part 2

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