3 out of 5

Label: Skin Graft Records

Produced by: Sebastien Fournier (engineered by)

But why though? I’m sure there’s more of a story behind Harsh Human Style’s release, but the various bits and blurbs I’ve found are all just variations on the press copy: after Ma vie banale avant-garde, the group dove back in to start recording, the end. These four songs are what was produced.

Now, knowing the group split soon after, maybe there was a very Artist decision in realization of the AIDS Wolf “project” having been completed, and so there was no reason to finish up an album’s worth of materials, if that was ever the goal. And so the songs just sat somewheres, as some songs do, and maybe the head honcho at Skin Graft has been asking for those songs for years and years and finally got a ‘Yes.’

I mean, I guess it doesn’t need to be more of a story than that, but I added details to it. I suppose I’m just scratching my head over the wait, and if there’s a reason to explain Why Now for releasing the songs. And I’m saying that out loud to perhaps justify my wishy-washy take of the material, which sounds good, but still lands the band in an “almost…” category; if I knew more of the story, I could do more than tell you that it still sounds quite a bit like Arab on Radar, albeit with some Flying Luttenbachers in the looser jazz structure of the drums and guitar, and clinging to Ma vie’s wandering noise as the lead-ins before a groove starts to kick. This is a pleasing direction from the band – which I always struggled to differentiate from AOR effectively – though this is that “almost…” tag: at only four examples, muddily recorded by Sebastien Fournier, it’s hard to tell how evolved this direction was / would’ve been. It reads as a demo in this presentation; had it been released as-is, I would’ve taken it as an exploration of adding some meat back on to Ma vie’s bony, pointed construction, and hopefully a preview of more fleshed out material in the same vein.

Alas, the years passed, and now we’re digging this up from the archives. If there are rabid AIDS Wolf fans out there, it’s definitely something to celebrate; if you’re more casual, like me, it’s a good but fleeting listen.