Diebold
Listen To My Heartbeast

The moment. No one can ever really say what it is, but when it comes to good old rock ‘n’ roll, almost everyone can agree the greatest music created by a few guitar chords, bass and drums is that which captures the inexplicable ‘moment’. That point where the hair on the back of your neck starts to rise before everything is stripped away and all your left with is that exhilarating sensation where absolutely everything feels like it’s suddenly possible. Impossible to replicate, difficult to explain, we know it when we hear it and those in thrall to it often spend entire lives chasing it.

Conceived and performed by A Silver Mt. Zion’s Sophie Trudeau and Ian Ilavsky, Diebold’s debut release,_ Listen to My Heartbeast_, is one of those primal servings of experimental rock ‘n’ roll that’s completely indebted to the moment. Recorded live with no editing or overdubbing, Trudeau and Ilavsky create a seriously loud, heaving racket out of just a bass and drums that veers away from the sweeping epics they favour when clocking in to their day job. There’s literally nothing ‘post’ about any of this.

Instead, what we’re exposed to on Listen To My Heartbeast is a blistering collection of six largely instrumental tracks that owe their existence to the kind of motorik grooves favoured by krautrock pioneer types like Neu! and the raw, primordial proto-punk of The Stooges. Which means that walls of distorted, bottom heavy rhythms are paired with layer upon layer of high-octane sonic fuzz and then put on constant repeat until you’re practically bludgeoned into submission over the span of a mere 35 minutes.

Point being, this stuff packs a punch. It really is as simple as that.