WORLD OF ECHO EXCLUSIVE - TRANSLUCENT YELLOW VINYL + POSTER
Shop favourites - both ours and yours judging by the amount of conversations I've had about them in-store - Cuneiform Tabs return with a formidable second record of psych-damaged astral planing. This isn't exactly the same kind of band that first introduced itself with that self-released self-titled debut in early part of 2024, the red-line scuzz thrill mostly replaced with a little more drug-fogged inner-gazing and gentle experimentation. It's the kind of transition you might compare to the one made between first and second Swell Maps albums, not so much in that the two bands sound alike (though they don't sound unalike either) but in the similarly adventurous take on bedroom sonics and song structure. Melodies drift in and out of focus in a dream-like logic fashion as guitars, synths and drum machines hum along deliriously, defined by a similar sense of we'll-do-as-we-want self-determination that charged the Brummie DIY titans. Pieced together remotely between London and San Francisco, it's the influence of the latter that seems to hold most sway this time out, West Coast psychedelia adjoined to new age aesthetics and Public Access TV static drone in a patchwork manner that certainly speaks to how the record was created. Dare I call this hypnagogic pop? The comparison doesn't feel a million miles off, though more accurate might be to understand Age as a kind of addition to the ghostbox continuum, haunted and dissociative in ways we might usually connect with Broadcast, Atlas Sound or even now-label mate Cindy Lee. Those returning for a retread of that first album might not find exactly what they're looking for in Age, but what is here is ultimately more adventurous and harder to place, the sound of a group pushing out into the lesser charted territories of their influences. They're impulses that prove east to trust.
FFO: Atlas Sound, Ariel Pink, Swell Maps, Dome, Broadcast
