3 out of 5

Label: self-released

Produced by: Body Hound and Tom Peters

Somewhere along the way in instrumental indie rock, somewhere after Slint and the first Tortoise album, its practitioners started to like jazz, and then their alt-rocky, time-signature riffage got more noodling added to it. Not, like, prog noodling – that was already part of the DNA – rather more of the improv vibe, where empty spaces got filled with “why not?” ideas of various talented folks following muses all over the place. The audience shifted from ratty-clothed kids angstily toe-tapping or head-banging (y’know, quietly, to themselves – this was still indie rock) to tucked in shirts, approving nods, and golf claps.

I’m not salty about this, or in any way being hyperbolic, despite having not really been actively listening to that music at the time this was all happening – my imagination is pretty legit, y’all: I’m sure it went down this way.

…And that bug, once bit, kept biting: metal / hardcore instrumental rock, already celebratory of guitar heroics or non-stop drum pummelings, had its Flying Luttenbachers and the like showing how this could be mapped to some pretty chaotic stuff. I’m much less salty about that – I love Luttenbachers – but, of course, once some relative extremes of that had been explored, the space filled out over the following decades with groups fiddling with the knobs of quiet and loud and minimalist and maximalist and “how jazzy are we.”

Body Hound is not jazzy per se, but they have that setting turned up pretty high: No Moon gets “prog” tags, which are not inaccurate, but the group does not reach for highs or lows in their songs, with 2-minute interstitials sitting right alongside tighter 3-minute outings, and more broad 7-minute runs, but it all hitting at about the same level and pace. I turn the volume up on this and I rock out, but there’s zero space on this thing, doing a kind of scaled down take on Behold… The Arctopus where I’m sure music theory inserts some actual repeated sections of songs I’m not able to grasp, and instead just hear note after note, daisy-chaining into a stream that becomes music. Arctopus, of course, has some bravado built into their performance; Body Hound has more of a spacey, laid-back vibe to it, but that suggests the space I’m mentioning it lacks, and – yes. Exactly. I spend my time digging a tune, but waiting for the moment when it will open up into a breakdown, or bridge, and instead, everyone just keeps playing.

I suppose I got stuck on the jazz thing because I kept going back to a sounds-like in my mind: Denison Kimball Trio, and particularly their soundtrack album, Walls in the City. The experience of that is to be led along to nowhere; and it’s by no means an unpleasant journey, just that you wind back up at the start, thank the guide, and don’t think to mention it later when someone asks about your day. Which is an easy leap to then call the music immemorable, but that’s not it; I mean: I thought of the album immediately upon hearing Body Hound’s rock version of an adjacent approach. Walls is a completely voluntary listen; it does not get stuck in your head, it does not beg to be repeated. No Moon does the same, and has similar soundtracky vibes, an alternative Mick Gordon score for an FPS with a robust inventory management system, and somewhat chill boss fights. I don’t rush to play that game, but I’m glad I own it and got the achievements.