ARCHIVE
SOFA
Source Crossfire
CONSTELLATION
8/10
Brooding ’90s post-rock from Canadian four-piece
Before Ian Llavsky cofounded Constellation Records – home to Godspeed You! Black Emperor among others – he played guitar in Sofa, a Canadian outfit whose slamming, sludgy post-rock was like a cross between Slint and Killing Joke. This limited-edition release stemmed from a planned reissue of their 1997 CD Grey (the first ever release on Constellation), now taking the form of a double album – the first Sofa music to appear on vinyl. The first LP is a re-sequenced version of Grey, which puts all the fast songs on one side and the slow ones on the other. The second LP takes tracks from two earlier cassette releases, Record and Town Unsafe, again dividing them into fast and slow sides. The crunching “Comma” offers an early indication of the sheer power of Sofa’s more aggressive approach, while the slower burn of tracks like “Current”, “Medicine Hat” and “Regret” demonstrate their subtler approach to balladry, bringing a lot of texture, a lot of angst and more dark than light.