From its propulsive Diät-tinged opener "Collision", through the scraping, noisy dirge of centrepiece "Uniformed Vision", to the funereal shuffle of its title track, Gyrate's "Negative Excess" ticks all the boxes for those with an itch that only yearning, gloomy post-punk can scratch. Subsumed by layers of keening guitars, each beat of every song hits like a defiant step in an onward march to a bleak future, a glimpse into which is implied by the amelodic but clear-eyed, incantatory vocals. Like their forebears Low Life at their best, Gyrate's music embodies a tension between abjection and nihilism, and a wry but genuine desire for some kind of transcendence, a dogged refusal to be dragged down by life's undertow. While these songs avoid the anthemic, they nevertheless serve as obstinacies to being drowned out by that which numbs our existence.Any familiarity with the lineage and tradition of this kind of downed-out punk will tell you that neither prolificacy nor any kind of career-oriented momentum is assured on the band's part, and this release (in limited quantity, naturally) has "expensive cult talisman" written all over its future, so interested parties would do well to act now.
