The title Tape Hiss instantly telegraphs a dissatisfaction with today’s digital world and, fittingly, the all-analogue second album from Rotterdam’s Rats on Rafts could soundtrack a half-remembered Eighties evening taking in a bill of Britain and New Zealand’s most singular post-punk survivors. Their musical inspirations ring through loud and clear. But – and it's a massive but – these Lownlanders do it better and more ferociously than any of their forebears.
Most prominent in the mix are the two-step swing of early “Pink Frost” Chills and the unwavering rolling crescendos of “Going up” and “Over the Wall” Echo & the Bunnymen. Also present are snatches of “Rowche Rumble” Fall, the power of The Chills’ fellow New Zealanders Bailter Space, and the primitive throb of prime Butthole Surfers.
Yet Tape Hiss does something remarkable with its building blocks. It actually builds on them, turns them into a coherent whole and – crucially – injects such high levels of fury and vigour that it’s instantly recognisable as a product of now, rather than a by-rote exercise in revisiting history. No band from the period Rats on Rafts pay testament to had this unhinged a level of energy. The album is unrelenting: tracks bleed into each other with no pause for breath.
Head straight for “Zebradelic”, the album’s track six, for Rats on Rafts at their most impressive. It begins as a feedback-shrouded, fuggy-atmosphered strum-along with a distant voice moaning the word “zebradelic” like a drunk in a gutter. Then, one minute in, it explodes like an out-of-control rollercoaster car heading downhill into an endless tunnel. In addition to its untrammelled energy, another marker of Tape Hiss is its fantastic production: cavernous and echoing, yet still with everything well-defined. Terrific. An album to be investigated forthwith.
Overleaf: Watch the video for “Last Day on Earth”
Watch the video for “Last Day on Earth” from Rats On Rafts’ Tape Hiss