by Layton Guyton
They Are Gutting a Body of Water (TAGABOW) and fellow Philly band A Country Western throw a barrage of different sounds at the listener and all of them stick. This five song split is ambitious in its transitions between styles and continues in the same vein as TAGABOW’s 2021 split EPCOT, which oscillated between shoegaze and breakcore.
Standout of TAGABOW’s two songs, “The Brazil,” captures the complete range of their sound, with several beat switches that push and pull the listener. The song morphs from fried-vocal shoegaze into slowcore into a series of swerving electronic breaks, and concludes with the perfect synthesis of its parts. Rapid fire kicks and snares cut through a cloud of inseparable vocals and guitars on the outro. It sounds like your favorite shoegaze band was run through a y2k futurism plugin that’s cranked all the way up.
A Country Western rounds out the split with their own takes on merging instrumental and electronic music. Their previous work is very much in the slowcore ballpark, and often leans toward acoustic, sparse mixes, unlike TAGABOW. Here, they surprise with skittering breakcore beats (“The Lung”), and massive guitar riffs (“Keeping up with the Joneses”).
Both of these bands are clearly not satisfied with resting on their previous work, however, their experimentation feels assured and wellcurated. On these five songs, they both stretch “guitar music” in exciting and necessary new directions, with a clearly shared idea of what they want to sound like. An Insult to the Sport clocks in at a short 15:26 (you could listen to the whole thing in a slightly-too-long shower) but TAGABOW and A Country Western make every second count and will leave you hoping for a full-length release soon.