Eight songs and seventeen minutes deeper into Single Frame's vault, I've been spun full circle: I'm now disoriented, punchdrunk, and a little thirsty. Featuring five new tracks and three alternate takes of previously released songs, Single Frame's Burn Radio Airtest EP is the clipped and burnt follow-up to their prodigious full-length, Wetheads Come Running. That album offered as much in the way of promise as it did in tangible payoff, but exactly what direction their future work would take remained to be seen. With this EP, that future sound is beginning to take shape, and it seems to be leaning much more conspicuously towards East Coast dance-punk flavors, electro freakouts, and darkwave discord.
The title track most closely follows the blueprint rolled out on Wetheads; warbled synth lines, choppy drum work, and Isaac Brock-like squawking, all bookended by found sound and reverb. It's one of several great tracks here, even if the tastes are a bit fleeting to feel substantive-- it's the same pleasure derived from all of their work to date, a sort of blustery slap and sinking afterglow of indulgence. "Clipper Ship", too, is easily recognizable as Single Frame material, only grimier and more linear. "Dry Lips Usually Crack" and "Without Pens", meanwhile, are pure unbridled energy carted in with electric distortion and an apocalyptic sense of immediacy, the latter song employing 30 seconds of digitized vocals before giving way to a few furiously intermittent rockouts.
As for the remixes, none stand up to their originals in terms of temperament, but some trip into a newfound atmospheric success. "Eavesdropper (Insomniatronic Mix)" could easily be dubbed "the Kid A version." It pushes the evocative vocals to the back of the mix, distorting them almost unintelligibly, slows down the keys, and deploys a drum machine breakdown in the middle. It's more harrowing but decidedly less hedonic. The other two are mixes of "New Car" and "Been to a Party at this House", the latter altered very frivolously-- perhaps simply more electro-tinged and distorted-- and the former reduced to a drone-session utilizing the borrowed guitar lick from the original. The record concludes with "100,000 Troops", a two-minute smattering of feedback, vocal samples, and persistent drums, all the while evoking the ghost of societal displeasure.
As is, the first half of the record takes an aggressive route, pushing the envelope the band sealed earlier this year, while its second half mostly wanders and kicks ponderously at stones in the road. To say where they're headed next is anyone's guess, but it seems to me this might have been more of an off-the-cuff sprouting than a sprinkling of planted seeds. Either way, I'm eager to see what happens next.
