Bilge Pump, The Edmund Fitzgerald
Noisestar Sessions 5 & 6

Two band, two sides, one record of deliciously distorted off-kilter rock and roll.

Leeds-based oddballs Bilge Pump attracted all kinds of acclaim for their Let Me Breath record a few years back, and their four songs here demonstrate that the trio’s love of the unusual remains strong. Awkward time signatures and deceptively complex drumming are trademarks; the dance-friendly instrumental ‘Rebel Decade’, Bilge Pump’s longest offering here at over eight minutes, an unexpected bonus. Theirs is a sound one million miles away from that categorised as ‘commercial’, but these songs will turn ears whenever and wherever they are aired.

*The Edmund Fitzgerald * contribute just a single track to the flipside of this blue 12”, but not one second of 11-minute-plus ‘My Quiets Heart Slight Of Hand’ (that’s what it appears to be called, anyway) is wasted. Their stop-start-stop-start again but LOUDER approach to post-rock is (was, for they are essentially no more) one done a million times before, but The Ed Fitz’s technical skill shines brightly where so many alleged superiors simply play arpeggio games ‘til their fingers turn blue. The incredible climax to proceedings here, comparable to peers/friends Youthmovie's stunning '...Spooks The Horse', has to be heard at maximum volume to be fully appreciated. That this incarnation of the band had to end is a pity, but this posthumous release only whets the appetite for what these young musicians will hopefully produce in the not-too-distant future.