Band: Vexed UK

After seeing and enjoying this band live a few times, this was still a very easy record for me to blow off. Even for a noise guy that doesn't listen to vocals, the harshest instrumental noise records tend to just function as pretty background music. This is not the case for Vexed UK.

Track 3 is the highlight here. It starts out with looped whistle sounds similar to Black Dice's Seabird. Then other vocal sounds are looped until they are sped up to nonexistence. Shortly after that a simplistically hypnotic bass and drum loop start up with noise on top of it. The drum beat does slight changes and slowly adds additional beats that don't match with each repetition.

Most of these songs start off very minimistically with different elements slowly building on top of each other. This can be very pleasantly disorienting during the transition between songs.

The presentation of this music is very well suited to the sounds they are creating. The album cover is text on a white background. At their last live show there were bright red lights beamed at the audience with the pair playing on stage in the dark. Their music is best listened to if you give it 100% of your attention while you focus on every tiny detail and these settings make it easy to do so. On their website at vexedmusic.co.uk you are able to stream and download the entire record for free. You are able to stream multiple tracks at a time which I think is a great idea. All I've tried is starting all of them at the same time. It was interesting, but I enjoyed listening to their songs one at a time much more. If anyone has any combinations that they have liked please share.

UK at the end of any band name makes me laugh everytime I see it. I believe this trend started when there were two different Charlatans and the first one didn't like the second one using the name. They kept Charlatans and just added UK to the end. While there is some punk looking band named Vexed, I am not sure if the joke is intentional.

This record is great. Do not make my mistake, get your hands on a copy as soon as you can.
--Reviewed by John Blogerty--

Members: Sarah Ruth Alexander and Michael Andrew Briggs.

Album: Meditation Music

Label: Gutterth Records

Song: 3 This text will be replaced by the flash music player.

Song: 4 This text will be replaced by the flash music player.

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