EXPERIMENTAL
BY JOHN MULVEY
Stephen Vitiello With Brendan Canty And Hahn Rowe
★★★★
Second
BALMAT. DL/LPDubstyle post-rock from unlikely supergroup.
Weird configuration on paper, this one. Canty you may know from his days drumming with Fugazi, here aligned with Vitiello, an ambient electronic producer, and Rowe, a violinist whose CV includes being part of 1980s New York art-rockers Hugo Largo. But pleasingly, Second often feels like a logical sum of its parts: stressed, dubbed-out rhythms (Canty on bass as well as kit) and Hahn’s lead lines (on violin, viola and bowed guitar) subjected to Vitiello’s light-touch processing (he’s on keys and guitar, too). Like peak Tortoise, there’s a sense of endless jams being reconfigured and collaged, but with those hardcore roots and reggae aspirations more prominent, so that Rhythmic Rhodes in particular sounds like a path less taken by post-rock. Also recommended if you’re partial to the brittle, needling grooves of Oren Ambarchi’s Ghosted trio (their third album is due in late August, incidentally).