As I said when speaking of Brazil’s Rakta in a post here last month: given the multitude of decades people have spent grinding away at the basic guitar/bass/drums rock band template without ever ceasing to find exciting new variations to explore, just imagine how many years more mileage you’re gonna get when you throw a few intelligently employed Boss delay boxes into the mix.

Such a sentiment applies perhaps even more so to Notes Terriveis, another band featuring Rakta’s guitarist Laura, alongside three male dudes if their bandcamp’s header pic is to be believed. She must be handling a good 75% of the vocals on this tape though, because to be honest, this is some veeery Rakta-like shit right here. Occasional interjections of man-voice aside, I’m not sure how well I’d do differentiating short bursts of the two bands in a random taste test. But, given how nuts I am on Rakta at the moment, that’s no bad thing. The same neon nightmare distorted guitar roar is right here, and the same ricocheting delay too – the latter perhaps employed with even more riotous abandon.

What most clearly differentiates the two groups I think is the absence here of Rakta’s more intense moodiness and kinda doom-wracked sense of musical ambition, which is instead replaced with a focus on more basic / playful punk tropes, faster and looser tempos and general sense of chaotic fun and non-damn giving.

By and large, I welcome this, and though Notes Terreveis’ grubby little mixtape can’t really hold a candle to the more calculated assault of Rakta’s LP, it nonetheless makes for a great, complimentary listen – like, Rakta in the playground, letting off steam before lessons recommence, or something.

In conclusion: both of these bands are awesome. Unexpectedly discovering them over the past few months has been awesome. I hope whatever they come up with in 2015 will be more awesome, and I hope they come back to the UK, which would be triple awesome.

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Labels: best of 2014, Notes Terriveis