by Cole Makuch
With the generic iPhone alarm at the top of the first track setting the tone, Ismatic Guru’s II is the embodiment of waking up too early and your whole breakfast sticking to the pan. Six minutes of spastic but locked-in grooves with lyrics— when you can process them— that sound a lot like vignettes of drug use but when you look closer, aren’t.
II follows Ismatic Guru’s eponymous debut and doubles down on its predecessor’s articulate hooks and driving bass, and pushes a revved-up warped tempo that leaves no room for catching your breath. The project is the brainchild of John Tohill and Brandon Schlia, two chronically productive Buffalo NY multi-instrumentalists and recording engineers that just might have had to push the speed of this EP so that they could get back to countless other recording projects, which range from hardcore to prog to top-40 radio pop pastiche.
The breadth of the creators’ influences and involvements shows. While “I Didn’t Like It” kicks the record off into a needly migraine-inducing groove, the first seven seconds of “What A Rush” veer into almost-commercially-viable territory with a tasteful feel-good guitar lick… before the lyric “black gums'' queues an arrangement that sounds like it was played by a good garage punk band whose members subside exclusively on Red Bull. If that were the creative secret here, it’s a believable one.