4 out of 5

Label: Jade Tree

Producer: Tim Goldsworthy, James Murphy

A nice slab of rock that seems average until you warm to its rolling waves of blended post-rock and krautrock workouts.  The hazy lead in and confident beat of ‘Flip Book Oscilloscope’ will remind genre fans of Del Rey (or maybe just me), but where that group plays around with the rock dynamic, Turing stays true to the ‘machine’ tag in its name and ratchets itself to a pulsing low-end.  But then veering from that Trans Am-ish territory, ‘Oscilloscope’ will hold on to a moment just long enough before throwing a curve in – whether its a new take on the riff, or a thundering changeup in the drums – clattering along with momentum for a good 7 minutes.  Its an impressive feat: the track never really slows or explodes, but manages to be recognizable and groovy throughout.  The early half of the album is majorly successful thanks to the second piece (not including that intro track) ‘The Doodler,’ which is the most organic rocker on the record and just goes on blitz for a couple minutes, perfectly setting the stage for the skittering distorted ‘rev your engines’ build-up of ‘Robotronic’.  ‘Robo’ plays around with our expectations for 4 minutes before finally letting loose, but as with ‘Oscilloscope,’ this still isn’t exactly reaching for the stars: both parts of the song balance each other, but each have their own sense of energy and restraint.  The following tracks are where my attention strays a bit: based on the nine minute / four minute runtimes, you could assume that ‘(Got My) Rock Pants On’ and ‘On Form and Growth’ would be trying for the same dynamic as ‘Oscilloscope’ and ‘Doodler,’ but instead the songs blend together, played with commitment but feeling more wandering than the ‘evolving’ sound of the remaining songs.  Which means we do close on a pretty awesome note: ‘Swiss Grid’ is blazing anger, finally letting loose in fits and spurts before fading out into some closing loops that perfectly lead in to the opening track, if’n yer favorable of listening to things on repeat, as I am.

‘A New Machine for Living’ probably isn’t the thing to put on to sell records, but if you can plug someone into headphones to put them into the groove, its a damn hard record to not tap your toe to.