Shamelessly infatuated with Cologne geniuses, Kingston greats, and New York cult heroes, Tussle have never had a wholly unique sound. But they've definitely had a signature style. Taking off from dub's radical reduction of reggae to bass and noise, post-punk's DIY appropriation of funk, and krautrock's hairy perversions of academic electronics, Tussle's minimalist beat contraptions were take-it-or-leave-it stark, and occasionally indistinguishable. But they definitely felt like the work of one specific unit. And their live-in-a-room reconstructions of Classic Moments in Left-Field Rhythms always had a garage band grit and art-rock wonkiness that gave them the potential to be more interesting than their more bound-to-the-dancefloor peers.
But they delivered on that potential a lot less often than you'd have liked them to. It wasn't exactly that if you heard one Tussle record you'd heard them all. But when those rhythms went slack, it could sometimes feel that way, considering the minor cosmetic mutations the band's sometimes arid, always instrumental, and all-beats-all-the-time attack had undergone since 2004's Kling Klang. It's hard to sell such stern and unchanging stuff to anyone but drum obsessives after an EP or two. Usually melody-free and sometime abstracted to the point of losing the funk entirely, it's easy to tune out when instrumental avant-dance records feel by-the-numbers rather than driven by some itchy compulsion that translated to the feel of the beats themselves.
The interesting twist on Tempest is that Tussle have seriously sweetened their sound. They may open with two forbidding slabs of digital dub-- the warm bass and corroded sonics suggesting a Jamaican studio outfitted with a souped-up Atari-- but for the most part this is the most luscious music Tussle have ever put their name to. The sound is always hazy or crisp just when it needs to be. JD Twitch of Optimo gives this new Tussle's more orchestrated, more ornate sound an appropriately voluptuous sheen, but he's not gaudy about it. Tempest is an oasis of carefully deployed glitz after the desert-like emptiness of some of Tussle's past records.
And for a band that could come off like a bunch of groove-obsessed acetics, never resorting to excess (like songs) when they could bear down on the crisp interplay of drums and bass, much of Tempest is downright maximalist, at least in context. "Eye Context" is a kitchen-sink epic that throws in playground handclaps, disco whistles, prog keyboard whimsy, manic cowbell, New Order bass, hardcore rave stabs, and stuttering old-school techno drums. But it also manages to arrange that potential chaos into something resembling a song, with peaks and valleys, thrills and lulls, mood shifts and memorable moments. In other words it courts an audience beyond people obsessed with snare patterns, and it's the album's obvious highlight. But even the second-tier tracks try a little harder than usual. When they look back to their old off-kilter live drumming on "Lightly Salted", Tussle seemingly discover how expansive that egghead funk can feel if you suddenly add some sweet and sour texture, and a little cinematic style. "Yellow Lighter" even uses the human voice, a little snatch of deep house longing, though again you'd be fibbing if you tried to claim a snippet-sized sample as anything approaching a "song."
And that's what still limits Tempest's appeal, much as it tries to escape Tussle's self-imposed Serious Dance Band limitations. They're still a group content to tastefully collage retro styles into almost-new and usually just-good-enough rhythm tracks rather than commit to the hard work of coining hooks, crafting melodies, or penning emotionally resonant lyrics. In other words, any of the less cerebral and more visceral stuff that makes dance music work as well in your home and heart as in the club. And at the same time, they're not willing to risk the alienation of true experimentation, either.
One of Tussle's biggest influences has always been Liquid Liquid, and they invited a couple of Liquid Liquid members to guest on Tempest. Comparisons to that monumental New York unit don't do any favors for Tussle. On their handful of epochal early-80s singles, Liquid Liquid could make chart-topping Latin disco moves feel as alien and eerie as anything on side three of Tago Mago, but they also so wrote basslines so forceful and catchy they could level mainstream dancefloors and get swiped for some of the biggest early hip-hop hits. Without that commitment to either pop immediacy or boundary-pushing weirdness, let alone being able to pull of both at once, Tussle are always going to feel like they occupy some kind of tepid middle-ground, however sharply their cymbals are recorded.
