3 out of 5

Label: Acerbic Noise Development

Produced by: Colin Marston (Dysrhytmia, recorded and mastered), Crawford Blair (Rothko, recorded and engineered)

Man, I miss this version of Dysrhythmia.  You know, when they would still stop and just rock out for a few minutes and were content with slow build-ups.  God bless Coln Marston’s skills, but Dys transformed into a guitar magic wankfest similar to some other Marston wankfest projects on their last couple albums.  And I love guitar magic wankfests, but I miss when Dysrhythmia would rock out.  It feels like such a slim part of their catalogue, now, which is why it’s awesome to add the 14-minute ‘Earthquake’ to that pile of tracks, even if it does share the original weakness of early Dys, being wandering moments between rock-outs and build-ups.  So Earthquake peaks and peaks and peaks insanely for like 10 minutes and then drifts sorta aimlessly.  But it’s worth it.

Rothko is a bit more layed back and groovy on this split, with Tell Your Story to the Winds a pretty excellent and bouncy counterpoint to Earthquake.  Second track Torch falls a bit more into sound territory, and unbalances the album.  Had Dys had another track or Rothko bundled Torch between another song with a bit more backbone, this EP would be damned significant.  As it stands, you’re probably better getting a full Rothko disc if that’s your bag, and re-listening to the Dysrhythmia track again and again.