by Niccolo Dante Porcello (@chromechompsky)
Chicago duo Imelda Marcos’ new record, Dalawa, is a dense and engaging album, full of the hyper-technical, but not ungainly, math rock that has defined recent records in the ever shifting and unabsolute genre. “Painting Of Skeletal Goats Grinding Their Teeth Across The Sky,” from the record due out later this week, is a entrancing encapsulation of the record as a whole; across its 5-minute run time, Imelda Marcos eschew traditionally math-y song structures for something more sonically cohesive and understandable. Channeling contemporaries Guerilla Toss, Dave Cosejo and Matt Durso take the irregular forms of noise and math rock (perhaps most elucidated by Lightning Bolt, Noxious Foxes, and indeed GToss) and make it their own. Although they follow the well-tested tradition of mixing melodic sections with ones of utter chaos, Imelda Marcos find a particularly engaging mix, with Durso’s rambunctiously virtuosic drumming playing off the high electronics favored by Cosejo. The opening section pits the two against each other, before a reprieve in which they’re again on the same team. They relapse into choppily entrancing configurations, but not before order is restored, at least momentarily. It is in these middle moments that Imelda Marcos stand out; their haunting and exciting moments of cooperation amidst more challenging compositions are worthy of significant praise.
Imelda Marcos' Dalawa is out this Friday, January 13th via Sooper Records.