Mit Nye Band – 2004-2009 Vol. 1 LP / 2004-2009 Vol. 2 LP (Escho)
Only 350 copies of Mit Nye Band’s debut 10” were pressed back in 2006. I have four of them. These records sort of just came to me, between the used bins at record stores and promotional mailings. Still, that’s an unreasonably high number of any record, let alone a privately-pressed Danish import record, for one person to own. If you live in NYC and you review vinyl records, you are in their demographic, one which really ought to be bigger. Seven members collude to make unpredictable, hooky, self-adhesive postrock aphorisms, playing around various themes on nearly every rock instrument known to exist, drifting into one another by vocal or digital bridges. The vinyl is not traditionally banded, so even though there are discrete “songs” on each side, things are meant to run together. Unlike Dirty Projectors, who are doing their best Sweathog impersonation to draw attention to that testicle-retreating height of spastic embarrassment (and man, they run it like a Swiss watch, don’t they), these folks work with larger, more menacing chunks of the familiar in their decoupage of avant-rock. Five years or more worth of ideas, from the studio, from the Roskilde Festival, from all over the place, with that awesome Euro notion of “and” when needed, and “or” when not. The B-side of Vol. 1 in particular rips some holy tribal yin yang a-hole something fierce; “New Druid,” which takes up all of side B, plays like This Heat crashing in on Tortoise’s “Cliff Dweller Society” editing sessions and putting some real weight on it. Both are classy, well-presented, and there’s only 350 of each (download codes included, but not activated as of press time). If you’re like me, you’ll probably find five copies of each jammed under your door by the weekend. (http://www.escho.dk)
(Doug Mosurock)
