Sit yourself down but don’t bother getting comfy, as Gum Takes Tooth’s third album is an intoxicatingly tumultuous ride, delivering a soundtrack for the disorientating and disaffected epoch of today. Consisting of percussionist Tom Fug and keyboardist and vocalist Jussi Brightmore, the London-based duo have forged a dynamic and explorative sound since their formation in 2009, blending the intensity of acid house with pysch-rock pyrotechnics.
Arrow is their first release on Rocket Recordings and it has set the bar high for 2019’s musical offerings in what is perhaps their most accomplished artistic statement to date. The record offers a compendium of sound system culture taken to the outer reaches of he cosmos, all delivered through a psychedelic haze. If looking for comparisons, artists as varied as This Heat, Coil, The Knife and Nurse with Wound spring to mind. But ultimately Gum Takes Tooth is a musical force of nature that is of their own unique cultivation.
The album starts out with a woozy, dub-flecked opener reminiscent of Sun Araw, with Brightmore’s heavily processed vocals reverberating in space alongside gradually emerging sonic textures. This suddenly leads into the driving, motoric, krautrock groove of the album’s title track, a 7-minute monster that relentlessly builds with energy.
The album continues to grow more chaotic as the kinetic, trance-like rhythms underpin the visceral shards of distorted, buzzsaw synth-riffs. At times the music can be blissfully atmospheric. Yet an intense and claustrophobic digital cacophony is always waiting round the corner, serving as an omnipresent sonic paranoia throughout the trip.
Arrow is full of dynamic ebbs and flows, with atmospheric intervals offering brief respite from the visceral intensity of tracks like ‘No Walls, No Air,’ ‘Borrowed Lies’ and ‘Fights Physiology. The varying energy of the album is displayed none more so than with the penultimate track. ‘A Still Earth” is a doom-laden dystopian soundscape which feels completely devastating, as if the technological paranoia has given way to morose despair.
Brightmore and Fug have created a very personal record, creating a narrative that appears to struggle through the confusing highs and lows of modern society that simultaneously maintains an optimistic idea of progressive momentum whilst being dragged under by fear, division and intrusion. It is full of bleak melancholy and claustrophobic noise. Yet moments of positivity equally surge throughout. The final track, ‘House Built of Fire’ encapsulates this, a charging beacon of hope that renders the damaging effects of destruction as equally offering a chance for positive change. This is a fitting end to what is a bewildering and transformative album that is definitely worth a listen.
Noise Compendium 