2 out of 5

Label: Self-released

Producer: Wayne Reynolds

LB took a few listens for me to get the vibe and dig on it, but since they have a good handful of albums, it seems like I lucked out with where I started.  “Extinct” isn’t great.  It’s boring in long stretches, and doesn’t show anywhere near the energy or sound-inventiveness of the other Brick albums I’ve listened to.  After several spins it opens up a bit more, echoes and background chatter becoming more apparent over the general droney hum, but the notable material is still fairly spread out, only one track – “Just Passing Through,” track 2, matching some of the thumping rhythm of the other albums I own.

Liquid Brick is an improv group, so a certain amount of wandering is part of the game, but what I liked about their previous (? there’s no date on this disc, actually) recordings was a sense of the group that would emerge from the melange of noise, when buzzes and clicks would suddenly congeal into a driving beat before fading out for more experimentation.  The strength of the compositions created went up and down, but on the whole, every moment was interesting, like you could hear brains working to come together for a groove.  But “Extinct” has a very ‘live’ feel to it – it’s 7 tracks but except for a couple stops, it could all be one long track, and the nature of the recording here, whether purposeful or not, seemed to pick up a heavy reverb on the low-end, which causes a bass hum for most of the album and flattens out the drums, the tribal pounding of which are sort of the driving force for the band’s mood swings.  This is why track 2 sticks out, because for a moment, the hum cuts out, the drums kick in, and Brick seems to remember how to play together and not just tap on their instruments.

With either a bit more differentiation between songs or some kind of scope that would seem to make sense of the entire album – I mean, I own plenty of psychedelic improv that’s one track or 14 tracks of noise, but most of it is united by… something, some feeling, some concept.  On “Extinct,” I don’t hear any of that… rather, i hear a band prepping for a better album.  Some good, very brief moments, background music otherwise.