Lost and Found (Already Dead) may reference the demo-tape idea behind this release, but there’s a charm and playfulness and utterly insane variety that Period Bomb injects into their music. Yes, these are, in fact, actual demos, recorded over a “large swathe” of time and collected here in one generous 24-track hunk of cassette tape. But the inventive Miami-based duo simply cannot sit still on a style, instead hitting record and bouncing from one idea to the next before they forget what they want to try. And they hit on some pretty good ideas.
You probably have to start with noise rock, because Cam and DJ play guitar and drums, respectively, and Cam screams a lot, but there are so many other experiments here that it’s really hard to pin anything down. There are even multiple versions of some tracks (well, at least one), with the manic guitar scribble of opener “222” stripped to Casio keyboardness in “222 OG Demo” — you can tell what’s going on there just by the name of it, and also that tunes may just never be finished in Period Bomb’s mind. Sound collages and synth trials dot the tracklist, and far outsider abstractions like “What’s That Smell? Best of the Period Bomb Hotline 2018” crop up as well.
But the Miamians are just as angry and bitter as they are playful and imaginative, as any glance at their discography yields scathing condemnations of the status quo in relation to women’s and gender engagement. The band instead embraces a queerness and gender fluidity that suits the scrambled music, allowing for the possibility of one thing or identity bleeding (yes, intentional) into another and affecting its very makeup. This makes for a fully compelling listen, and a completely unexpected one. So … pretend I never said demo, I guess?
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