Cop City/Chill Pillars – Held Hostage on Planet Chill LP (Florida’s Dying)
You’d have to be an insane person to expect anything great from a record that looks like this, but little could be further from the truth: this is one supremely weird, engrossing bedroom surf/twang/take me 2 yr dealer trip, nailed to the kush bush like Beardo on the Mount. Cop City/Chill Pillars (Christ, that name!) hail from Lake Worth, Florida, just north of Palm Beach, and I am having a hard time figuring out how people who live there would be making music like this, but you know, it makes perfect sense. It’s simple, strummy wrong-chord sort of stumble, caked with synths and treated of voice, but it makes for some fine, slightly off kling klang post punk in line with the Fall or the Country Teasers. But unlike a lot of impostors out there, CC/CP is completely single-minded of purpose, to the point where their curious production choices and relentless thud put them square within the mastery of their own sonic domain. No matter how strange and alienated things get, there’s always the brain stem firing dutifully underneath. Totally terrific. It’s great fun to figure out where they’re going next, and you’ll be surprised when you find out that they don’t wear out their welcome. Find you one. Need you one. (http://www.floridasdying.com)
(Doug Mosurock)
