4 out of 5

Label: Murailles Music, Kythibong

Produced by: Vincent Robert (recorded by, mixed by)

Electric Electric III is one of the coolest records you will ever hear. You will feel cool listening to it. You will suspect that people who listen to it feel cool. Even as you’re covering up your ears from its surprising clatter at points, your head is bobbing and toe is tapping because, damn, that’s a weirdass, addictive beat. And very probably the people who make it are pretty cool, but of that variety where they just take it in stride, thank you for saying so.

But this is also the kind of cool where… maybe it doesn’t always work. EE are trying something, and are inspired to explore within its walls, testing its borders, but sometimes the explorations go slightly astray. Though they’re never fruitless.

Combining the workmanship of krautrock and math-rock precision – Turing Machine and Cluster, hand-in-hand – with the brutal kitchen sink industrialism of early Foetus and then some Battles-esque experimentation, all of that gets you fairly close to III’s sound. The differentiating factor is a lack of distinct agenda: EE are not here to make you dance, or rock out, and aren’t out to noise-assault or impress, though those things each happen / occur in turn.

Wrapped up within our first three songs is our lack of agenda, or an anti-agenda of sorts: opener Obs7 escalates from electro-pop to krauty big beat to ever-escalating chaos as live drums, distortion, and chanted vocals reverb into ear-view. Followup Pointe Noire is a mess of percussion, broken but rhythmic, just barely getting free jazz on us, like an electronic Bablicon. Then Black Corée attempts a more direct vocal number, though the singing is still heavily treated, and backgrounded. This last bit is a hint of awareness: the singing largely feels out of place when it’s a main focus, excepting on The River, when EE channels Battles’ Gary Numan-fronted My Machines – i.e. the group gives almost fully over to delivering a pop song, which is a nice, mid-album bit of focus. Elsewhere, though, songs are best when vocals are treated as another instrument and not for lyrical delivery – the monotone and heavy crunch is akin to Atombombpocketknife, but EE are, on the whole, not a rock band, and so their music isn’t quite structured to support some of its affects. But it’s also not a failure by any means: you are dancing to this music, while intrigued by these off-kilter decisions, while maybe also repelled by how loud and brittle the clash of digital and live sounds can be. The throughline is a mentality that equates to a generally recognizable sound of grooving chaos; the output is wildly varied, such that I’ve had to drop multiple band references without, still, really getting to the core of what the record “is.”

But that’s… kind of its deal. You know it right away, but good luck describing it accurately. Except that it’s cool as shit.