Pop Scene - Cambridge
This is an extract from a feature on the Cambridge music scene, profiling us as well as The Puncture Repair Kit, The Resistance, Canaveral, Tupolev Ghost, Fuzzy Lights, The Vichy Government, The Last Dinosaur and Um.
The Cathode Ray...
Live Reviews
Victoria and Jacob / CRS*, Portland Arms, Cambridge 02/08/2008
The Portland Arms in Cambridge is something of a local institution. This pub-with-a-back-room venue has been the scene of many a great evening of live music over the years, and with the recent demise of the short-lived Barfly just across the road,...
CD Reviews
Argh E.P.
The Cathode Ray Syndrome (or CRS) contains four members, hailing respectively from London, Cambridge and Brighton, and who “meet in person only to play famously shambolic gigs” (according to the MySpace). The band’s third proper ...
Argh E.P.
The Cathode Ray Syndrome (or CRS) contains four members, hailing respectively from London, Cambridge and Brighton, and who “meet in person only to play famously shambolic gigs” (according to the MySpace). The band’s third proper release, E.P. ‘Argh’ (a title as non-verbal as their music), sounds like an education in post-rock or noise-rock, specialising in guitar-and-rhythm-section instrumentals with ceaselessly unpredictable chord changes and riffs. The guitars are sometimes reminiscent of Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead’s frenzied Telecaster attacks, and the stop-start rhythm playing is at times hard driving, while at other times slows to a deceptive lull.
CRS are also undeniably difficult to review, although they are recommended listening for their highly immersive, almost hypnotic quality. Their tracks are essentially mood pieces – ambient and brooding, while still retaining the dynamics and momentum of experimental rock songwriting. Whether or not the outfit will endure in this instrumental incarnation remains to be seen. It is possible that a singer will be required for CRS to gain any kind of mainstream success, but to hear the band in their present awe-inspiring and compromise-free form, check out the MySpace.
Ryan Daff - www.noizemakesenemies.co.uk
Posted by Arthur CRS* on 04/03/2009 4:30:29 PM