4 out of 5

Label: Hungarian

Produced by: ?

Man, this is like everything that was happening in post-rock instrumental music in the late 90s, summarizing the entirety of the bands in drummer Blake Fleming’s orbit on the Skin Graft label, and roping in the angularity surrounding / springing from Slint, and that sound’s evolution to the jazz-leaning wankistry of acts like Tortoise and their much-iterating ilk. And this wasn’t a retrospective summary: Laddio Bolocko is a core piece of the puzzle that defined the scene, following directly on Dazzling Killmen and existing in a flash of years towards the tail end of the 90s as Thrill Jockey and Touch and Go were coming alive and tapping into the early 00s internet culture where those labels (and Matador, and other high profile indies) had a hit-maker vibe to them amongst the cool kids. LB were definitely way too off-kilter to make it onto those lists, but at the same time, there’s an alternate world where they get namechecked as much as Don Cab or the aforementioned Tortoise; instead, they stuck to seemingly their own record label (Hungarian), went cryptically erotic or creepy or silly on their cover art, and stuck a 40:00 minute song onto the end of their debut album – they were aiming for the fringes.

Opener Goat Lips will make the angst-y post rockers happy: it hits hard and weird like early Don Cab but reaches into the unhinged thrashing off something like Flying Luttenbachers as it goes along. Then its time for noise manipulation and minimalist grind on the Brise-Glase-y heft of Call Me Jesus and Nurser, doing cinematic swagger – a la DK3 – on The Man Who Never Was, with Dangler going full-on free jazz. Y Toros is somewhere between the quiet intensity of Windsor for the Derby and the krautrock of Trans Am, for 20 minutes why not… and then bring it back for another 20 minute reprise of the same.

Yes, this is a bravado tour of styles, and pretty purposefully guided from the more accessibly linear opening tracks to the looser, open-ended jams of the latter half, but the broadness of the approach is A. a lot to take in and B. means I’m not always in the mood to go from start to finish; as per the title, it took me a while to warm to LB until I accepted the album’s flow – otherwise, it can kind of be disappointing if you fall in love with the unleashed jazz romp of Dangler, and then hear the headbanging bash of Goat Lips, or vice versa. Even with the full picture, it’s an odd piece of work: that it exists at such a crossroads of bands and styles means it’s not the first thing I think of when I’m in a math-rock / noise-rock / whatever-rock mood, but the quirks I’m highlighting can also make it the perfect thing to toss on when you’re undecided, marveling at how fortunate we are that musical weirdos from varying walks of life churned out mini-epics that, unless you were part of the scene or have been doing your indie rock history studies, probably won’t ping on your radar.