Say what you will about garage rock, or stripped down singer songwriter balladry, or pop punk, or whatever else you kids are into these days, I dunno. “Keep it simple, stupid”-type ish. Sometimes I’m just looking for a little technical wizardry. I want to imagine that musicians somewhere practiced their hands into calloused oblivion just to play the ideas pouring out of their heads. Show me a project that calls itself “prog” that doesn’t drown under the weight of its own pretension, and I will reward you with one hundred high fives tapped out in a staggered time signature that switches every two iterations from 7/8 to 11/8, forming this weird kind of 6/8 pattern across measures in the long term.
Enter: Psudoku. First off: the name. My feeling: I’m down. The music: self-proclaimed “prog grind” possessed of such detail and complexity that one must simply submit to it with a grin. Its elements: blastbeat drums, razor guitar riffs, theremin and organ missives. Its maker: one Norwegian man named Steinar Kittilsen who plays and programs all instruments. Relevant Bandcamp tags: hyperspace, multiverse, speed of light, warp. Short phrase: more words after the colon.
Listen to Psudoku’s album Planetarisk Sudoku and thank our celestial overlords that this human exists as a resident of this present day earth and not, as it would seem, a future so ravaged by Skynet that humankind had to flee to terraform a new extra-galactic sanctuary. He is right here and he has clearly been woodshedding. Grip a physical copy here, if you so desire.
• Psudoku: https://psudoku.bandcamp.com
More about: Psudoku
