these fellas aren't new to the party. By our (admittedly uninformed) count, they stand accused of something closer to 9 CD's worth of jams - You have to lump all of Avi Ghosh's work in there, which means dEFY too. (And we're being conservative: We haven't included any of Matt Gruber's pre-dEFY stuff, produced back when he was a math major in New Jersey.) They are longtime members of the Austin Electronic Music Grid, and continue to gig about town on a regular basis (Emo's, Stubb's, etc). Looks like they'll be jamming at SXSW this year too.
Though Avi, in his various forms and incarnations, has done some me-too-ish, accessible (some even downright danceable) tracks; this latest release is deeper, more sonically dense, and more compositionally complex, more so than even the excellent "All That's Left Of Us" LP. In a word, Mature.
Taking your first tour through "Movement I", you'll be tempted to dump the guys into the NIN-knockoff bin (as you would the earlier releases). But don't focus on the singing alone: Though Avi's vocals do affect Reznor's breathy whispering, frenzied screeches, and melodic lines, this new release rushes past that industrial mold; bursting out with some solid harmonic voicing (ie., "Lapse"), fiendish post-New Wave-ish arpeggios, and the periodic departure from traditional ABA structure, sometimes flitting dangerously close to too-dissonant-for-your-own-good experimental. But this is a Good Thing, defining this one as a breakthrough release, compositionally, even by their already-high standards. Art Versus Industry has walked that fine, marketing-based line between "sounds like" and "just like"; that razor-sharp edge between being mistaken for a pre-existing legend, and being their own. Legend, that is.
