Customer Reviews

Chat And Business

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you are one who is particulery sick of the onslaught of new retro revivalist rock bands that have sprung up in the wake of The Strokes and their nyc progeny, then you might as well stop reading this review right here.

Ikara Colt are an LA based british band that are seemingly riding the coat-tails of the minimalist garage rehash of the last year and a half. Yet while thier contemporaries, (and let's face it, superiors)such as the strokes and interpol, manage to do quite well at injecting thier own character and vitaliy into the late 70's rock and post-punk aesthetic Ikara Colt seem quite one dimensional. Thier bland sounding, almost indistinguishable from one another songs, seriously lack a sense of urgency and wit that would add some much needed color.

Yet this not a band without redeming qualities. Ikara Colt has found themselves a niche with pounding out punchy, quite and efficient rockers that are short on originality, but huge on attitude and careless grit. Chat & Business takes plenty of cues from jagged edges of Joy Division to the combustablity of early 90's sonic youth in thier basic guitar, drum, vox mix that occasionly adds some synth for minimal flourishins. Oddly the bands few numbers that hint at some sort of dynamic proggesion are left until the tail end of the disc where the seem to arrive too late to infuse any power into the record

Most likely this album will only have a lasting appeal for fans of rough around the edges brit pop and straight ahead rockers. Anyone looking for a real sense of substance beyond the visceral attack of Ikara Colt will probably be left unsatisfied.

Bottom line, this may be a somewhat promising debut for a tight, stripped down rock band, you have to ask yourself if theres really a need for another one of those.

If you're the type of person that doesn't like bands because they are too full of themselves ("those rock stars with their fancy sneakers!") and/or you are a raging hypocrite (but don't think you are, like me) than you will love this album. This is art punk, the stuff of classical post punkers, or at least the hint of stuff.

The album opens with the brilliant (not brilliant, but I already wrote it... so there) one note, which not by coincidence only uses one note, and just gets better. This is an angry, or perhaps more appropriately dissatisfied, band. They like to yell and complain about the world as it is molded by manufactured pop and corporations (chat and business, eh...).

Their name is supposedly a fictional race horse (colt, ha!), this because they believe bands should shoot themselves after five years. The song writing is full of clever little things like that. It is conscious of the prevalent intellect (there is one isn't there?), yet entertaining, and never condescending, it is alive and it is relevant. And that is what is missing from most punk these days, most being bland and pointless (bad combination for any type of music). The album just seems to be trying to serve something raw and real, and on that level they succeed, this album will hopefully be hailed as a classic in due time (at least a "colt" classic, haha), but for right now, it's a fun listen.

All that being said this album is not for everybody some people are bound to purchase it and say, "This is just noise, with someone snarling incoherently in the background." If you think that you might say that, don't get this cd, but if you find yourself bored with most everything else give this cd a chance as it should grow on you with every listen, and I think that is always a good thing.

Oh, and there are free stickers that you can use to decorate your album cover. So even if you don't like the music, there's that.

With it's jittery energy, abstract lyrics, and menacing basslines, Ikara Colt sounds a lot like Pink Flag era Wire (definitely not a bad thing at all). Though a thoroughly original sound may be lacking, a stack of great art-punk tunes most certainly is not. At The Lodge is the standout. One of 2002's best albums.

This U.K. foursome comes on like Wire fronted by The Fall's Mark E. Smith. Their debut, Chat and Business, is brash, loud, fast, and sleek. Decidedly post-punk, these twelve tracks are awash in angular rhythms and the usual youthful disaffection. Nothing wrong with that; in fact, it's part of rock and roll tradition. You can smell the desperation festering in "Belgravia". And the gritty disavowal of hundreds of years of European aristocracy in "Sink Venice" is a stroke. But after that it's down to a steely, brittle sound, the hectoring vocals of Paul Resende (admittedly sweetened when Claire Ingram chimes in behind him), and how familiar you are with the preferable works of Wire and/or The Fall at their peaks.

I'm not a huge fan of the punk sound, but there are a few exceptions. Fugazi and The Fall are among the few bands I really really like that have a punk element to their sound (though I doubt either would be classified as "punk" per se). That said, I didn't expect to like this. At first listen, it came off as somewhat abrasive and atonal. I gave it a chance for a few days in my car stereo, and it grew to be one of my favorites from 2002. There's definitely a Fall influence in there, but it's original enough to go beyond sounding like Fall wannabe's. It's fun to yell along with!

Although others have cited the obvious influences present in this album, the song structures and dynamics between tracks allow Chat & Business to escape these influences. I can't count how many times I've left work and felt the need to blast the first track. The attitude and occasional abrasive chord also feel purposefull, not pointless. As I write this review the lowest used price is also 18 cents.....do you even need to read an interview with that price?

I think that this CD is a great album, it was the one that first introduced me to the 'art rock' sound, and still one of my favourites. Paul Resende may not have the best voice but I feel that only adds to the appeal, jagged sounds that really shouldn't sound good, but somehow do. I'm not too sure about the choice of track order, tracks 1 and 2, and the final track, probably the worst of the lot, not particularly bad songs but mediocre. Tracks 7, 8 and 9 however are unforgettable, especially After This and At The Lodge. City of Glass is probably the most 'commercial' track of the lot, but the CD doesn't really contain anything that's likely to ever be appreciated by a mainstream audience.

I'm not sure quite where the Strokes/Hives comparisons come from, as (I am a fan of those bands, by the way) I don't see any resemblance at all to these.

Not ripping off the Strokes/Hives as much as they're ripping off Wire and The Fall, Ikara Colt show promise, but lack that spark that would make them compelling. The production is very treble-heavy, reducing the guitar to almost white-noise buzz, which would be fine if the singer's voice ever escaped the monotone purgatory where it seems terminally based. Maybe if they had the sole female member fronting the band they'd go places.

Sink Venice is fine, One Note is good but beware it's the most aggressive song on the album, and City Of Glass shows the band's potential more than any other track. Sort of like a more boring International Noise Conspiracy, but with some tweaking they might be worth it.

This could easily be an ep. Ikara Colt starts off with the song "one note" that when heard recals the snotty punkiness of Le Shok. After that song the rest of "chat and buisness" is stroke-like and sonic youth-ish. Rudd is great and so is sink venice. They do have great ideas and are from england. They get four stars because the good songs are great and the bad stuff is just mediocre. Intresting release.