tussle
Tussle swagger and stumble somewhere in the rafters of haggard and excited clanging about, flirting with the outer fringes of cosmic disco. I myself stumbled upon them somewhere in a web-mist earlier in the week, finding them solid and refreshing; just a step away from the familiar.
It’s unclear where this eight year old four piece see themselves in terms of style or genre, but their crisis of identity, when it shows itself, is becoming. A new release in the pipeline with Smalltown Supersound may give us some clue as to where alliances really lie, but in lieu of that, it’s worth a jaunt around some old material.
They say they sound like a “bullet-proof tiger”, but for the Prins Thomas version the reality is somewhere closer to a robotic pedigree cat, working a pared down sleekness against the heavy percussive smatterings of their two drummers:
Tussle - Night Of The Hunter (Prins Thomas edit)
This on the other hand, showcases the side of Tussle which enjoys lolloping about with clumsy tribal beats, clambering around on a crooked primary-coloured playpark, which seems a more befitting natural habitat. Most pleasingly though, it retains a heady rhythm which conforms; organic and creative but not needlessly confusing - scatty about the details but essentially decisive. It reminds me of EYE’s Lindstrom remix.
What first grabbed my attention is this video (I’m pretty bad for not watching videos online from start to finish, so the fact I finished means it somehow sidetracked my short attention span to reach my imagination). It’s a simple pots-and-pans ditty for the creatures; the tip tap and drop drop of found sounds, crockery and rocks, visualised through a kaleidocope of filters…watch it after the jump…
Tussle from Anthem Magazine on Vimeo.
Leave a Reply
