Ex Models feat. Kid Millions
The Chrome Panthers

THE REVIEW

Stunningly uncompromising, deviant, exploded (and explosive), surrealist, the agile musical/roar (fundustrial worship, the self-definition...) barely contained in these miserable twenty-seven degraded and skinned minutes that attest to the new twisted recording studio effort of the expressionist and gaunt (now) New York duo, aided in this exhausting new project by Oneida drummer Monsieur Kid Millions. Compelling and claustrophobic (as well as overwhelming) is the delightful maelstrom of no-wave/industrial/noise fearlessly advocated in these highly audio-sharp seven shards: the extreme (already known) in music projected onto its most dangerous (and wonderfully vital) intriguing, extreme consequences.

The structural (subconscious) framework would seem to be precisely that of the very first Devo (up to “Are We Not Men...” to be clear, not a step beyond), not so much, of course, on a merely dynamic level, but for the remarkable free form-ness that characterized the beginnings of the band led by the good Mark Mothersbaugh, from whose timbres they also partially take/depend on the histrionic Shahin Motia-vocal/hysterics. Overall, a lucid, futuristic, as well as paroxysmal and flickering expressive kaleidoscope presents itself before us: if the (remarkable) Brainiac were still "alive" and had decided to heavily - very much - damage their expressive module, they would probably have undertaken stylistic solutions not particularly dissimilar. Those who, like the miserable rambler, enjoyed greatly (and even more) the disjointed, spiky, and enjoyable previous efforts (two LPs plus a sparse handful of singles), upon listening to this new damnedly ruinous legacy will be completely and positively astonished as well as largely satisfied: the iridescent sonic-impasto has been further and mockingly damaged, the nervously song-form (so to speak) of previous testimonies remains virtually a vivid memory “That's funny I don't feel like a shithead”, the initial track (after a caustic brief intro in which "our" tune up - so to speak - los instrumentos), stuns and annihilates more than expected and/or predictable for its searing vehemence and chaotic frontal assault: bass and drums plus an impenetrable thicket of assorted noises (voice included) rise as a natural upheaval of the auricular pavilion with a hypnotic and varied pseudo-live-jam percussionist/industrial; likewise, the stunning and untamable "Buy American" could be envisioned as the ideal yet impenetrable soundtrack for the recent social/anthropological audio-visual and documentary treatise by Mr. Erik Gandini “Surplus”, or the definitively shaking “Headlines” resulting in a dose of sound-energy truly beyond the limit of the allowed.

As the good old advertising Dan Peterson used to say: Ex Models, for me, Number ONE.