The four members of Eddy Current Suppression Ring all worked for a vinyl pressing plant outside Melbourne, Australia. Six years ago, as their company Christmas party wound down, the four began jamming drunkenly together. They'd never penned a song or been in a band. Impromptu frontman Brendan Suppression simply ad-libbed lyrics into a tape recorder. Somewhere in there, more than just chemistry took hold. They settled on one questionable band name, an electrical circuitry term that also yielded three individual monikers: guitarist Eddy Current, drummer Danny Current and Brendan Suppression. Bassist Rob Solid held out. They released a spate of 7" singles on their own with relative ease. Then they unleashed two mighty full-lengths that until recently have never been available outside of their native Australia at the same time. Both are primal slabs of minimalist guitar music.
The "M" word might conjure images of bands falling anywhere between Wire and the White Stripes. While it's easy to detect notes of Wire, ECSR have developed an economy of sound that relies less on spiny riffs and more on an instinctual use of space. Within the clatter of each three-minute blast, Suppression is given the room to do just what he did during that Christmas party, not so much diarizing as slobbering each thought as it arrives to him. In "Cool Ice Cream", he screams for ice cream/sex over some guitar coiling and motorik bass, the end product a lot like a cuddlier, less creepy version of the Fall. And like the thrust of the Stooges, another easy reference point, that sexual drive (or template, really) lives and breathes in the dynamics as well. "Pitch a Tent" marries the same ideas to mangier soloing. When ECSR are at their best, they're working around an insistent groove, building before finally collapsing to saddle up again seconds later. There's little variation, but there needn't be. Even when the songs butt heads with one another, the melodies are pure comfort food. There isn't a weak song in the pack.
The stronger record by a hair, last year's Primary Colours is a very natural, even artfully polished extension of its predecessor. The DNA remains the same, just married with less hitches. As "Memory Lane" opens with nearly identical chopping, Suppression makes a difference by slowing his roll. Always dynamic, he presents himself here as an insightful drunk rather than just a drunk. Take the way "Wrapped Up" runs along some really beautiful ribbons of guitar melody for instance, Suppression going so far as to harmonize the equally warm refrain. "Colour Television" hits harder and with more menace than anything they've done yet, but there's a softening of edges taking place throughout, a band testing limits after having already refined them. Current in particular is able to dictate the climate, forcing the band out of the garage and suggesting they never go back.
