Split
(2008)
This split album featuring two Tokyo bands, The Mornings and Artless Note, features four tracks by the former, three by the latter and then two tracks by both bands together. From the get go, The Mornings are clearly working from the same stop-start art-punk playbook as bands like Panicsmile and other Tokyo contemporaries like Tacobonds and Worst Taste, with vocals delivered with hysterical intensity, flying back and forth between guitarists Kishino Junya and Watanabe Shinpei like a sort of tag team psycho drama.

Artless Note share with The Mornings a love of changing time signatures, but occasionally imbue their songs with something dangerously close to melody -- sometimes, as in Fan, gloriously so. By cranking down the intensity and jacking up the catchiness, Artless Note compliment The Mornings' contribution by offering something different that nevertheless works towards creating a coherent whole.

The final two numbers, featuring both bands, are both unruly, cacphonous exercises in aural torture and interesting in their own right. The second of the two, Psycho Futoshimaru, does the best job of capturing the essences of both groups together within the confines of one track and both groups are wise to resist the temptation to drag either song out into any kind of extended noise rock jam session. Ian Martin 24.Nov.08