Ooh! Aaaah! Oh! Tape-poppin’ fresh… D’OH??? Yes, that’s a Homer Simpson reference, employed to communicate the surprise I felt upon dropping Armure’s self-titled tape like an acid tab. This ain’t drone or experimental noise, this is NZ-style, drumless punk and yet another example of an underground artist that reminds me a lot of the unknown savant that is Timur Bimp Jones. If Siltbreeze hasn’t started sniffing around this entity a little then this brand of cracked sonics is more widespread than I thought, either that or no one’s signing anyone anymore and SDZ is basking in the fertile fruits. What I want to express more than anything is how unique this plodding, meandering cassette is. Just imagine it: The universe is stripped down to its base elements, all of us perish and the only one left is Tibo Padlock, armed with a four-track recorder, all the time in the world, and no one to share his music with but the god that has deserted him. What does he do? Why he gets the-fuck busy of course, albeit in a maddeningly deliberate manner. This is the closest thing I’ve heard to those old Ariel Pink recordings made with little but mouth-drums and a two-string guitar, but it’s truly a whole different dimension of sound. Old Kurt Vile (there’s no other brand of Vile in the Purdum household) also factors in on the lofi basement-folk tip, with just a shred of Pumice thrown in. It’s good to be alive, so let’s celebrate by sounding dead!
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