Islet - Wimmy
- Written by Jonny Stockford
When my dad overhears me listening to music that isn't The Rolling Stones or The New York Dolls - in other words any band he doesn't listen to - he always calls it a racket. Even if it's something which could never be classified as a racket, it's still a bleedin' racket. Well, I'm not going to play Islet in his presence any time soon, because that may cause him to speak some sense, and we don't want that. This Welsh band do not deal in subtleties, and if you see any of their records in the ambient section of your local record store in the future, someone's clearly having a joke. They really do make a complete racket, but it's a wonderful racket; an aggressively percussive, dizzying, and ever so slightly bat shit mental racket.
If you like your bands sounding a bit like concrete, a Sleigh Bells CD and some beef in a blender, then Islet may be for you. They follow in the footsteps of Everything Everything and In A Bar Under The Sea-era dEUS, cramming so many different ideas, melodies and rhythms into each individual track that listening to them often leaves you needing a lie down. Their music is so densely packed, patchy and restless, that it's very tough to pin one song down, let alone get to grips with what Islet are setting out to do on a wider scale. I mean, where else would you find tribal rhythms, haunting melodies, steel drums and scratchy guitar riffs side-by-side?
There is a lot to like about Islet's freewheeling approach, but they do have an annoying tendency to sacrifice a good melody for the sake of yet another diversion. When they slow the pace down and give a song some room to breathe, however, the results are sublime. The bass-heavy 'Horses and Dogs' has a more lazy rhythm that allows them to string out a series of nonchalant situations (“trotting on a horse”, “walking my dog”) that seem to fit perfectly with Islet's lack of Serious Face.
Notably, there are some beautiful choral melodies on Wimmy but rarely do they get the space to breathe and develop into their full potential; instead they seem resigned to bit parts competing for attention against a series of guest appearances. 'Living In Manilla' gives us the perfect example of this ADHD. It's like that annoying family member of yours who keeps changing the channel just as you're getting your teeth into a decent programme. 'Dust of Ages' is the anomaly, a stripped-down, goosebump-inducing beauty of a track that Thom Yorke et al would be proud to own as their own.