Numbers

Now You Are This CD UTR12

  1. New Life
  2. Mind Hole
  3. Kosmos Love
  4. Hey Hey Dream
  5. Fantasy Life
  6. I Ripped My Own Heart Out
  7. Fly On The Window
  8. The Mapping Of E8
  9. Lone Life
  10. Liela Mila
  11. Everything Is Fine
  12. I Want To Believe
  13. What Happened To You

There isn't an easy comparison for the dire poise of Now You Are This, the new record from Numbers. The songs are minimal and epic at the same time; powerful, blunt guitar riffs, insistent drumming, and tense slabs of analogue synthesizers. The futuristic propulsion of Kraftwerk, the taut structures of Wire, the strange beauty of Eno, filtered through the raw-knuckled roughness of Suicide?

The most disquieting aspect of the songs is their charm; thirteen tracks of dazed and charged near-collapse that unexpectedly catch in your mind, echoing their haunted buzz for days and weeks after the record ends. Not since The Sliver Apples has a band so successfully wedded a cacophony of electronic keyboards with such a clear-voiced pop sensibility.

A significant part of this catchiness lies in the traditional chord structures and vocals; Indra’s floating, hypnotic singing, Dave and Eric’s timeless harmonies. This weave of simple, strong vocals lends a poignant, unflinching guide to the dogged, swirling sound of the record. Amid the tumultuous, irresistible waves of sound that drive the last minutes of Now You Are This, the world seems to fall away in the face of a voice asking, “what happened to you… what happened to me?”

Numbers draw a line from the simplicity and honest clarity of traditional American music like the Carter Family through the pounding of today, creating a phenomenal, appropriately dark vision of tomorrow's pop music.

Upset The Rhythm