As before, when I wrote about their "Turk Street" EP, a lot of other sites are already saying a lot of good things about "Gambling on the Richter Scale"—the first full-length effort from Kowloon Walled City (released by The Perpetual Motion Machine). And rightfully so, as these eight songs/37 minutes expand on their brand of thick, pounding rhythms and dingy, grimy (yet well produced, mind you) textures with smatterings of somber clean passages, subtle little bits of melody, and loads of great little winding riffs that offer up some warped dissonance that I'm all over. And all the while they've maintained the balance with slower and more spacious areas while also taking sludgy standards to even heavier depths than before. And seriously, this thing sounds fuckin' amazing. Recorded in their rehearsal space!? Incredible! I totally love the fact that the basslines play such a huge role in the material. Killer. If you've foolishly remained in the dark about these cats, remedy that problem immediately. That's all I'm gonna say...
Kowloon Walled City "Paper Houses"
Once more the band has taken the most admirable road of making the entire album available as a free download via their website, so... you can always grab that here:
[DOWNLOAD] Kowloon Walled City "Gambling on the Richter Scale" (@ Kowloon Walled City)
However, for a mere $11 you'll get a colored vinyl LP (housed in a gloss varnish full-color jacket, no less) and a silkscreened sleeve-packaged CD of the album. So, yeah, in case you're not so good with the math, that's an unfuckingbeatable deal. Insane.
Get It
The Perpetual Motion Machine (LP+CD)
Comments
interesting stuff indeed. but no comments so far? :)
10.24.2009 | By Carlos
I honestly can’t believe this band isn’t being talked about by all the snot-nosed hipsters out there; they might not be as criminally underexposed as Dead City, since their website seems to have a few press snippets from “Terrorizer,” “Guitar World,” and the like, but seriously these guys should be fucking huge. This band seems to get by on pure songwriting without having one easily-identifiable “gimmick,” unless you count the recording; Andrew’s comment about the bass presence is dead on ... totally ungodly. The full-length is a little step up from Turk Street (which was also great); everyone needs to go download this right away, listen to it once, and buy the fucking record.
10.24.2009 | By zg
ZG hittin’ the nail on the proverbial fucking head.
10.24.2009 | By Jack
This rules!
People into early Torch, Unsane, Melvins and more recently, Moutheater, should be looking into this. So heavy.
10.28.2009 | By Birkir
The music is amazing but the vocals just completely ruin the record.
11.4.2009 | By Gary
So you don’t like JJ player’s club then?... I can see shallow north dakota fans gettin off on this.
11.9.2009 | By Jack