Dope Body - Kunk

I love how the first track ‘Casual’ starts, like it's an outake from Bloc Party's Four (2012), all grimy electronica mixed with pumping bass and drums, and a vocal happy to be the underdog in the track. But it doesn’t go anywhere from there. It just sticks to being casual. And this is the basic symptom of the entire 'album' or release. It's a track by track splicing of some good ideas that resulted from jamming.

David Jacober: “[When we recorded Lifer with Travis Harrison] we also spent several hours in the studio improvising and Travis recorded that too. We took apart those improvised parts, found parts that we liked and made songs out of them.” (Lapointe, 2015)

There are ideas on this album – plenty of them – but none of them have been developed (or edited) to any extent worth taking note of. One of the problems as a listener is that I feel like it’s an experimental album, except I already know it’s derived from the jam sessions that brought forth last year’s Lifer (2014). That album had songs on it, and it was clearly post hardcore goodness; this is merely demos in a reworked form.

Guitar noises and distant vocals sounding from another mic room do little for the track ‘Dad’ but add another interlude for the already short thirty-two minute album. 'Muddy Duane' ambles along on a simple guitar picking line with some electronically enduced industrial barrage filling in the spaces, and then dies; whereas 'Old Grey' actually begins rocking out with a simple bass line and drum beat under the stomping guitar noise rhythm, vocals keep the song going... but when does it end? When does it change? 4 minutes with no build up, no dynamics. 'Pincher' on the other hand is a real standout that could easily get anyone rocking out and bouncing around on the dance floor, if only more of the tracks had sounded like this.

Mostly it’s a question of whether you like repeated noise effects carrying on with random vocals over top and bare minimum drumming underneath: if so, it’s cool noise rock exploration; if not, then it’s a waste of time releasing this as nothing more than demos of ideas that could potentially be reworked live on stage and rerecorded further down the track in far more potent forms.

If I were a Dope Body fan I’d either be impressed or really annoyed. It’s like they’ve completely embraced noise rock and 80s experimental electronic music but failed to make something of it. I appreciate what they released here, but it's not worth listening to on any grand scale. However, It is a nice insight to how the band jams, and where ideas can come from.