WHIRR (Pipe Dreams) LP/CD
After the live recorded 'Distressed' EP and the single 'June' in 2011, California' Whirr now released their first full-length with 'Pipe Dreams'. Like the previous releases, their music is a noisy Shoegaze/Post-Rock bastard that often is represented by a constant buzzing. For someone who never heard them, their music is best described by dropping names like A Silver Mt. Zion or even Noiserock like 'Mogwai', but the mix is unique.
When I first associated A silver Mt. Zion while hearing the first seconds of the album, I was immediately puzzled because of the changes afterwards. Calm alternative sounds are followed by noisy driving parts, interrupted by some acoustic guitar tunes or even short blasting parts, that more or less refer to atmospheric Black Metal in the modern American way, which doesn't surprise, because some of the Whirr guys are also playing in the atmospheric Black Metal band Deafheaven.
But enough talk about the sound, let's speak about the music. While listening carefully, you can hear some nice rocking riffs and really cool basslines, especially in the faster parts of the album, but that is a bit tricky. Because of the sound being buzzy most of the time, these details are easily overheard, and that might be intented. The nice female vocals and choirs are always in the background, too, always a bit hard to understand and more used as an additional instrument or sound.
All in all this makes a pretty good Post-Rock/Shoegaze record, but the constant noisy attitude and indifferent, buzzing sound blurs my impression and sometimes it´s hard to listen to the full album at a time. Whirr's 'Pipe Dreams' is a good buy if you're more into the noisy Post-Rock stuff of the above mentioned bands, if you´re more of the Post-ROCK person, you might wanna listen to their free songs on Bandcamp etc. first.
(Thomas Braun)