Presented with a blurred photograph, stretched into abstraction along the edges and funneled down to a clear center, we focus on the legible figures that found their way into the pinpoint of clarity — forms charged with additional atmosphere by their contorted surroundings. I listen to rock music (call it: [grunge], [lo-fi], [post-punk]) that possesses these rough edges — recorded, perhaps, with an array of room mics, and presented with minimal frills in post-production — and I hope that something in that haze shouts its way out with enough grain and character to justify the blur that surrounds it. The symbiosis between the central figure and the murk can elevate both to a new plane of focus and wonder.
6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6, the new tape on Bridgetown Records by St. Petersburg, FL-based trio Terminus Cursus, balances at the center of this lo-fi symbiosis. The band’s battering post-punk compositions reach us as if performed at the far end of an empty warehouse on drums and scuzzy guitars dusted with reverb and distance. At the focal point of these refracted rock bruisers, Patrick Mugan howls and snarls. His vocal attacks, alternating between open-mouthed bellows and menacing hisses, surge over the band at a level of conviction fierce enough to charge their mission with an almost holy emotional significance, as if the feelings channeled into these performances possess no other appropriate means of escaping their confined exteriors.
• Terminus Cursus: https://www.facebook.com/TerminusCursus
• Bridgetown Records: http://www.bridgetownrecords.info
More about: Terminus Cursus
