X

The Swiss allegedly love order and rules. Schnellertollermeier have a track "RIOT" on their instrumental X album, which is fittingly raw and noisy. Still they apparently have a Swiss trait as some bits of their album are quite math-rocky and organised, particularly the beginning and end, where they slowly develop an initially sharp and monotonic rhythm in an initially quite precise and calculated manner with controlled outbursts, just to let all order go at some point and dive into a sea of sound experiments where quite raw and noisy drums occasionally provide some rhythm or rather the fun of filling the ears with sound. Surely there's something on offer here for the lovers of odd time signatures, but the emphasis here is not on complexity but rather on raw energy and coherence.

The album starts with the 20 minutes title track, which is really an experimental feast, running from structure over dark soundscape and hard free jazz in order to eventually arrive at an intricate guitar oriented part that would have honored most King Crimson albums were it not for the obsessive drums in the very end. Then there's a collection of five shorter tracks each of which elaborates one of their facets. Backyard Lipstick is in the sound experiment territory with a sampled industrial rhythm, Riot and Massacre du Printemps have heavy drum oriented math rock with many changes, Sing For Me is more atmospheric based on slowly evolving sounds without rhythm, and ///\\\/// picks up the slowly evolving rhythm style from the beginning leading to an energetic climax before winding down calmly.

This is an astonishing album from a unique band between math and avantgarde but always rock, with a bit of psychedelic and Kraut mixed in, sometimes not really easy to listen to, which takes its major attraction from the mix between organisation and free improvisation with some hard drumming, sometimes sharp and sometimes rough, between the two. 4.2 stars.