Larvae - Monster Music EP
LARVAE's Monster Music EP is a snarling, four-track precursor to this fall's Fashion Victim CD and, as a preview of Things To Come, it packs a solid punch. Two tracks of furious monster movie inspired drum 'n' bass, followed by two illbient excursions, Monster Music is a toothsome burst of beats and atmosphere which compresses an entire Godzilla movie down to a twenty minute thrill ride.
Beginning with the tiny twins who summon Mothra with their siren song, "Mothra" chatters and clatters for an instant before bursting forth like a Lepidoptera whacked out on methamphetamines and frantic for the lightbulb on your front porch. While the twins continue their tiny clarion call, the beats mash and swirl around them like Tokyo collapsing. My exposure to LARVAE previous to this EP has been their more illbient stuff and I'm glad to hear they can maintain the menance and power at harsher speeds. This isn't breakcore, but rather Scorn-style beats run through a drum 'n' bass blender with a healthy homage to the monster movies of the 1960s. "Ghidrah" has a tiny piano line ghosting in the background behind the beats that sounds almost like the beast's cry slowed down several thousand times until its high-pitched giggle becomes a dolorous lament. The breaks and beats collide over a landscape scoured by air raid sirens like a calamitious battle between the monsters and the best weaponry mankind can muster.
The second half of the record is darker and slower, like the dark nights which swept across Japan as the monsters begin their approach towards the shores of an unsuspecting country. There are storms on the horizon, natural disasters waiting in the wings. "Mecca" slinks along, the beats more subdued -- almost subterranean in their movement. The latter half of the song is sharper, a crisp beat which pushes along the underground rumble. Monsters coming, the drums are saying, monsters coming.
The Monster Music EP winds up with a remix of "Mothra" as imagined by Mothboy and The Dustmite. Almost a drug-induced fever dream, the tiny sound of the twins echoes and stretches as the beats of the remix churn and bubble like a slow eruption. Bells ring slowly, tiny chimes like air bubbles escaping, as we sink into the depths of a dream nightmare.
Matt Jeanes, one of the lads behind LARVAE, says in a moment of naked sincerity on the blog on the LARVAE site: "Still, I thought that while the Monster Music EP was a nice, self-contained package, that it might be a mistake to release it into a world that doesn't always understand the kind of geeky, fanboy humor that spawned it." Some of us understand completely, and are thrilled to have a modern soundtrack by which we can watch guys in rubber suits pummel each other and trash miniature cities. Great stuff.
LARVAE
Ad Noiseam [2003]
music
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