As a follow-up to their debut LP Now Here’s An Echo From Your Future, this mini-album is another GIRLS IN SYNTHESIS release of which the hardcopy is already sold out! Sticking true to super-limited pressings, this UK DIY band delivers with lots of ambient noise and grit—they’re pissed, and you better not get in the way, as in their closer track, “Don’t try!”
Intense and properly humourless power trio delivering ripping post-punk with a big sound. The upfront vocals make everything sound like an emergency and there’s a lot of inventive interplay between vocals and instruments. The opening tune “Arterial Movements” sets the parameters: high energy, distinct bass, and guitar that at times pierces, at other times drones, and other times expands into a sick echo. GIRLS IN SYNTHESIS are working in dangerous territory for a UK band owing a debt to GANG OF FOUR. So much of that sound was run into the ground in the Bush-era by bands like the RAPTURE and the ROGERS SISTERS. This reviewer is pleased to report that GIRLS IN SYNTHESIS do not fall into any such sonic cliches. I like how the slow grind of “Human Frailty” resolves into the lopsided, atonal sonic nightmare. They sound like they would be killer live.
Arterial Movements is the 2019 EP from riot-starting Brits GIRLS IN SYNTHESIS, featuring three new and previously unreleased songs. A little taste of what was to come before Now Here’s an Echo From Your Future, if you will. I was unfamiliar with this band so I had an unbiased mind walking into this, and holy hell! This one really got to me. Three tunes of unrelenting rhythm, Molotov cocktail-wielding anarchic punk in the good vein of the ’80s UK scene but with a modern edge. Intense, political, and catchy. Makes IDLES pale in comparison. Go get this!
