fakejazz.com

The Skaters' second album, Rippling Whispers, shows the band at their most focused, channeling their energies together to create huge, pulsing industrial meditations. The sound of this album is as if they took Einsturzende Neubauten, distilled it, then slowed it down, leaving only industrial tones and droning micromelodies. Despite its harsh tone and the shards and screeches strewn about the edges, the sound is resplendent. Track 2 is the highlight, as the lead guitar creates a churning metallic tone which repeats a calming eight note pattern. As the lumbering machine starts to stutter and stall, other instruments interact with it - a muted, unaffected guitar prances around each lurch forward and squalls of feedback push against it, trying to get it started again. An amazing track that really took me by surprise. The other three tracks take a similar form and are just as great. Track 4 combines a cranking guitar strum with a few layers of highly distorted vocals - choral moans and birdlike chirps - and repeats them at a fast pace, creating a rocking, lulling feel. Track 3 builds into a cacophony of dueling car alarms, as if recorded in a cathedral, as the fluctuating tones echo and bounce off each other to great effect, really filling the space. In track 1, the robot revolts against its programmer, creating piercing moans of modem-like tones - which must be the machine code version of some sort of swear words - as electric pulses form repetitive waves of feedback. The Skaters racket is a wonderful one, and on this release they're able to harness it, creating pleasatly abrasive drones.

Skaters at Amazon & Insound