September 19, 1998

Sevens And Twelves

Somewhere in the vaporous glow of post-rock heaven, all good bands will have their ungainly mortal brains replaced by the optimum frequency modulation....

8 / 10 Somewhere in the vaporous glow of post-rock heaven, all good bands will have their ungainly mortal brains replaced by the optimum frequency modulation. Fridge, thankfully, won't be one of them, too happy rambling through all the permutations of their minds to relinquish them for hard-edged perfection.

Collecting together the trio's singles to date, these two discs highlight their quietly confident insularity. From a distance, it's teemingly diverse - the calypso ripples of 'Astrozero' replacing Teutonically approved dots and loops, the scabrous jazz scales of 'Fisa', the Add N To (X) nightclub nausea of 'For Force' - yet close up, they have a lovely precision. Unafraid to call a simple harmonic motion 'Simple Harmonic Motion', it's a slow, time-lapsed world they create; 'Anglepoised' blossoms over 15 blissfully rhythmic minutes, while 'Sequoia' traces a silvered violin trail over sparse, subspace dub.

Tortoise, in their infinite, arcane wisdom, induce wonder in the listener by naming a track 'In Sarah, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Both Women And Men'. Fridge, somewhat less terrifyingly, call one of their songs 'Concert In Your Home'. 'Sevens And Twelves' is that friendly, that immediate, but the windows are open on a world of possibility.

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