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Mastul—Devil
Music
by Jedd Beaudoin
Mastul—Devil Music
Originally published August 14, 2003
Devil Music play what some might consider post rock.
The songs are short on traditional verse-chorus structures and long on
extended, airy grooves that sound as big as the night sky. But what's most
impressive about them is that it sounds like they're having way too much fun.
They're big, brilliantly childlike and yet seriously accomplished.
The players (Brendon Wood on guitars, synths and
vocals, Jonah Rapino on electric violin and synth, Tim Nylander, credited with
"batterie") seem to have maintained a healthy sense of wonder about
both music and their instruments.
The opening "Ambush From All Sides"
provides a perfect example of this. There, the trio sounds like a group of
children who've found brand-new instruments tucked under the tree on Christmas
morning and can't wait to find out what each of the keys, each of the strings,
each of the drums and cymbals might do once they're manipulated just right. (If
you've ever tinkered with an instrument, especially one you don't play, you
probably know this feeling. And if you do play an instrument, you probably have
the joy of rediscovering this all the time.)
By the track's end, they've proven themselves
thoroughly competent, no longer the clumsy bunch they appeared only five
minutes before, yet you can't help but wonder to what ends they could take the
song if only given a little more time.
Luckily, there are five more tracks on which they
get up to the same kind of wide-grin-inducing mischief that makes Mastul
not only an intense, important record but a fun-to-hear one as well.
For fans of The Flaming Lips, early Pink Floyd
and Solgett.