7 / 10
There is, as any productivity conscious factory foreman will tell you, a certain comfort in repetition; a curious relief to be eked from the ashen monotony of the everyday. And here, on Quickspace's third album, it seems Tom Cullinan's Krautrock disciples have hit upon a motorik El Dorado - a place where tedium is transcended by zealous determination, and glacial repetition becomes a thing of hushed and haunted beauty.
Like most drone addicts, their adherence to Krautrock's dusty dictum can occasionally grate ('Gloriana' recalls Blur's overkeen saddling of Pavement's slumberous aesthetic) but Quickspace's enthusiasm soon vanquishes that genre's starched constrictions. For although Krautrock is clearly Cullinan's bread and butter, 'The Death...''s real sustenance lies in the Londoners' hearty embrace of garage rock's joie de vivre - a refreshingly raw cogency that energises each of their motorik rambles. It's this flash'n'grab briskness that rescues tracks such as the 11-minute-long 'Climbing A Hill' from Teutonic po-facery - allowing a pop-scented warmth to breeze through their otherwise pristine grooves. 'The Death...'s burnished centrepiece is 'They Shoot Horse Don't They,' a Yo La Tengo-shaped trinket that pushes metronomic repetition to deliciously hypnotic extremes: a triumph of melody over monotony, emotion over art.
Long may they drone.
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