4 out of 5

Label: Discos Mascarpone

Produced by: Kevin Le Quellec (mixed and mastered by)

This is a bizarre, wonderful cross-section of (yes, I’m stuck thinking of some female-fronted acts due to the vocals) Uzeda, Pre, and… Polar Goldie Cats? That last bit totally got me, because I’m not sure I’ve heard another band do their exact minimalist complexity thing, where the looseness and sparseness are misleading entryways to some oddball post-punk stuff. Massicot mix that up further with a funky bit of bass (where Uzeda comes into the picture), and then an absolutely ripping use of guitar and a repeated squall / squeaky noise – see: Pre, but there’s also a general no-wave vibe in the atonal and slightly off-timed vocals – and then and then and then krautrock, tick-tock plodding roboticness of appropriately named tracks like Internet. And, y’know, all of this is before things break out into their post-punk freakouts.

MORSE can feel a bit repetitive, as that starting point of sparseness (and whatever that squeak is – strings?) is essentially there for every track, sometimes making it hard to feel like you’re progressing from song to song. That’s also part of its appeal, though, as it casts a kind of mesmeric spell where you begin picking up on its subtleties – the insertion of melody into that sparseness – and then you’re not exactly surprised when you realize the group has started riffing at some point, as you’ve been well led into it as the playing becomes a little more and more unhinged, but it’s like you wake up in the middle of rocking out, blink your eyes a few times at the chaos, and then start rocking along.