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Noise punk from Montreal.
Our take: The artwork on this one threw me a little. If CPU Rave’s tape had been dressed up in stark black with distorted and scrawled text like a classic Confuse layout, I’d have been a little more prepared for the music contained therein. That being said, while CPU Rave’s pogo rhythms, noisy guitar textures, and echo-drenched vocals (a lot like Lebenden Toten) are pretty on the nose, the actual songs are a little more unique. To me, there have always been two distinct songwriting approaches in noise punk: one based on dissonant chords and one based on bright and poppy chords. CPU gets around this distinction with more complex riffing that’s dark and aggressive, but with an ominous sense of melody. Remarkably, CPU Rave pulls these songs in that unique direction without losing that sense of off the rails craziness that is such an essential part of any good noise punk record. Excellent stuff.
Our take: The artwork on this one threw me a little. If CPU Rave’s tape had been dressed up in stark black with distorted and scrawled text like a classic Confuse layout, I’d have been a little more prepared for the music contained therein. That being said, while CPU Rave’s pogo rhythms, noisy guitar textures, and echo-drenched vocals (a lot like Lebenden Toten) are pretty on the nose, the actual songs are a little more unique. To me, there have always been two distinct songwriting approaches in noise punk: one based on dissonant chords and one based on bright and poppy chords. CPU gets around this distinction with more complex riffing that’s dark and aggressive, but with an ominous sense of melody. Remarkably, CPU Rave pulls these songs in that unique direction without losing that sense of off the rails craziness that is such an essential part of any good noise punk record. Excellent stuff.