Bronze – In Stone CS
NNF321
Few bands perplex like San Fran riddler trio Bronze but even fewer have managed to hatch and hone such an obliquely singular sound. The group’s third long-player, In Stone, twists and burns through eight new iterations of their classic oscillator-fusion psychedelia, inflected with shades of post-punk raga, skronk lurch, modal incantantion, deep space narcosis, lizard kingmanship, and home-wired industrial dementia. As an album, these recordings skew tenser, twitchier, a touch paranoiac, bloodshot tweakers stalking steep foggy streets. The alchemy of drummer Brian Hock, vocalist Rob Spector, and electronicist Miles Friction is always riveting in the live sphere but In Stone feels like more of a studio document, exploratory and expressionistic, full of ideas and psychic interplay. Bay Area burnout rendered as psychotropic sculptural waveforms. Confusion isn’t sex, it’s something stranger. Black tapes mastered by Ruud 66 with J-cards designed by the band. Vinyl edition on B.F.E. Records.