Sextile

Rock and roll will never die. Rock and roll elevates, discombobulates, it mutates or it stagnates. It does because it must. From its origins as rhythm and blues with added propulsive backbeat to express ‘growing pains’ observations that scandalised the genteel and vandalised the masses that ‘feel’ to punk’s pilfering of its energies and supposed social threat, rock and roll thrives and survives through those that harness its elemental truths.

Over 70 years its numerous iterations have seen it develop and progress, envelop and regress. As innovation became renovation, the flame that once burned so iridescently forever in danger of dying out.

However, there have always been those that tended to this spark, fanning it and valiantly maintaining its cultural potency. Rich regeneration is gained through a process of reassembling and redefining. Disassembling and refining. Using the contents of the past to craft (not mimic or pastiche) the contexts of the present. Looking ahead, moving forwards, feeling and taking the febrile temperature of the times and fashioning the requisite art.

First came Suicide. 1970s New York avant-garde scuzz-fuzz diviners, leather-clad street-beaters abrasively antagonising those entrenched in the past with their de-fusion of proto-punk noise, technological testaments and future-shock tactics.

Then came Sigue Sigue Sputnik. 1980s postmodern voyeurs of the media-totalism we’re encased in today, cyber-punk philosophers warning of the collapsing of perceptible boundaries and information-overloading. Their prescience would weigh too heavy and internal pressures would stall their foresight. Their satirical omens only now fully audible and visible.

Now we have Sextile. A trio of New Yorkers (Brady Keehn, Melissa Scaduto and Cameron Michel replacing the late Eddie Wuebben) hiding out in the City of (fallen) Angels. Cavern-dwellers dispensing electronic body music for tectonic shape-shifters. Subterranean sonic producers condensing movement for harmonic scape-drifters. Like their estimable forebears they blend the sentiments, wend the fundaments and transcend the elements.

Formed in 2015 ‘PUSH’ (on Sacred Bones) is only Sextile’s third album (2015’s ‘A Thousand hand’ and 2019’s ‘Albeit Living’ sandwiching 2017’s ‘3’ EP), but, for those who wait, it’s worth its weight.

‘PUSH’ is darker, starker, heavier than previous offerings. Their Front 242, à;GRUMH... et al leanings imbued with a crunchier, punchier throb. However, their goth-rave underbelly remains firm and tight. Never more so than on ‘L.A. DJ’, a sermon-like takedown on an anonymous button pusher who’s ‘still’ getting away with it.

Opener ‘Contortion’ is … well, it twists, turns, bends, warps, like it suggests. Sinew-stretching, back-breaking, tempo-setting.

‘New York’ nods to Josh Wink’s 1995 consciousness-raising statement. As the mind wanders inwards, the spirit ventures outwards and upwards. Acid squelching enabling higher planes drifting.

Anarcho-punk activists Crass get namechecked on ‘Crassy Mel’. A prodigious (sic) blame-name-shame-game pointing the finger at a known irritant. ‘They’ know who ‘they are’.

Proceedings plateau with the somnambulant-ambience of ‘Crash’. With guest vox from Izzy Glaudini of fellow electroubadors Automatic it’s a space-age Eno-like meditative rumination on the benefits of letting it all go, shaking it away, getting rid of the psychic debris through movement (mental and physical).

Standouts ‘Basically Crazy’ and ‘Modern Weekend’ are Sextile in their element, typifying their ‘all-killer-no-filler-lean-mean-music-machine-mayhem’. The latter is a sound-clash epiphanic tonic.

As part-time party-starters ply their shoddy EDM, Sextile further demonstrate that boundaries still need pushing, limits always need testing, playing safe should never be an option.

The future is out there somewhere. Sextile are determined to find it.