I listened to a few La Pince songs before going and enjoyed them. Their set was great and their singer was a very enthusiastic frontman, which made for a fun live show. I decided to buy their album, La Simple, and whichever band member was running the merch stall kindly gave me this copy of the Casse Brique album. Sarah also bought the La Pince album, but got given a free cd rather than an LP. I felt pretty smug that I'd got a free LP.
* Thinking about it, I wonder if I always just assumed they shared some member because I was given the record for free. For all I know it could just be on their record label and excess stock they wanted rid of. The La Pince record doesn't list the band members' names anywhere, so I can't check. I'm sure the internet would tell me, but I'm clearly too lazy to do that research. Apathy, eh.
As it turned out, I think I prefer this LP to the La Pince one, although neither set my world on fire. Casse Brique are a two-piece who play perfectly enjoyable awkward instrumental math rock. I have a few albums of broadly similar music, and there's not a great amount that sets these guys apart from, say, Sleeping People. But does there need to be? - on the rare occasion I want disjointed math rock, then this ticks all the boxes. I say "rare" because as much as I enjoy it, I find a lot of this type of math rock to be too jarring to listen to that much.
The album might be two EPs put together (again, I'm sure some digging on the internet would tell me) because one side is labelled "Rebelote" and the other "Coinche". The second side has a bit more going for it - Slip Mahiounaise has some very interesting things happening and Frontal Foot verges on being a punk song - but the last song on side A, Ghandiloquant, is very good too. The artwork on the back of the sleeve is strangely horrific but it comes with a cd of the songs, so that's a plus.
Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 8
Cost: £0 new
Bought: Gig, London
When: 06/10/12
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: cd included
