SQUID レコード& CD

Review: Squid return to Warp with O Monolith, amping up the indie festival favourites' new penchant for fast, hardcore jangle-jams peppered with electronic glitchings and odd subject matters. Bright Green Field laid the formula at our feet, but we're certain it'll be O Monolith that best represents Ollie Judge and co.'s newly impassioned, kooky sound. Still, the playful song structures and exclaimed vocals remain present. New highlights like 'Undergrowth' capture it best: raucous blary horn sections, frightening choruses, and a sound that evokes that of a hellish circus, all make this one a rather enigmatic, intelligent listen. We'd expect nothing less from Squid.

Review: There's no 'difficult second album' syndrome evidence on Squid's sophomore full-length. While it lacks the forthright, math rock and post-punk-inspired immediacy of the Brighton band's acclaimed full-length debut, the density, inventiveness and experimentation that marks out O Monolith more than makes up for it. For proof, check recent single 'Swing (In a Dream)', a wall of sound affair that builds through approaching waves of instrumentation (first picturesque 16-bit synths and acoustic guitars, then grooves, trumpet solos and finally grizzled guitars), the laidback post-punk-funk of low-slung treat 'Undergrowth', and the skittish, jazz-flecked, layered soundscape that is 'The Blades', where squally horn solos and dense alt-rock guitars catch the ear.

Review: It's Squid, but maybe not as you knew them in short form. While musi-cally not a million miles from the earliest samples we had from the band, Bright Green Field is a different place that we find them in. An "imaginary cityscape", as the outfit have apparently put it, which is home to a multitude of things - people, events, movements, memories.

So whereas before things took a pretty intimate, even domesticated lyr-ical slant, here the scope is much greater. Track titles like 'G.S.K.' should be enough to prove the point (a not-so-subtle nod to Big Pharma giant GlaxmoSmithKline). Elsewhere themes range from aggressive propa-ganda of right wing politics to physical space itself. An outfit real-ising what can be done with the reach of their voice (or maybe just fi-nally releasing it), while remaining true to the punk, art rock, jazz fusion you were hoping for from this confident Bristolian debut.