Start by imaging the last half of Sonic Youth’s “Expressway To Yr Skull” — specifically, the echoing part that ends in a locked groove. Thela’s Argentina is the sound of that locked echo getting picked up and shaped into new forms and directions, filled out with droning microtones and a pulse. Nels Cline once suggested that Argentina “seems like the only logical way to follow all that post-SY, post-Slint music,” and if you’ll allow me to briefly think about music in terms of minor era-based segments, Thela’s sound exists in a tightly packed sliver: it’s the mid-90s, so Harsh 70s Reality is out there; Royal Trux already ground rock music into the dirt one way, and all this post-rock stuff just seems to have abandoned “rock” in favor of stargazing (or lounging, even) — how do we break free and take it elsewhere?
Thela’s music is vaguely identifiable as rock, but only because of the instrumentation; guitarists Dean Roberts and Dion Workman are more likely to wrench out a trail of feedback than anything resembling a riff. Without overtly framing their tracks or becoming predictable (“dude, where are the crescendos?”), the echoing drones and clang of Argentina sculpts a narrow spot touching on the vague, inexpressible moodiness of the Dead C with the clarity of 90s post-rock, all filtered into long, gripping drones. In short: less murk, more open space. (And it kind of rocks in a way, kind of.)
What makes Argentina interesting to me today is that it really does sound like “post-rock,” but in the sense that it’s rock music emptied of itself. The instrumentation is identifiable, yet the rock signifiers have been otherwise deflated, hanging loosely at the sinews of scraping guitars and unsteady percussion. No track titles either, just a tarnished red chair in an empty and unfinished room — a fitting image, perhaps, for the Auckland, NZ-based trio’s second and final album on Ecstatic Peace: recognizable and worn, minimal and oddly claustrophobic in its emptiness. Argentina is an interesting moment where the free- and post- became entwined, hollowing out the mantle of rock into a serenely empty cavern, thick with dust yet never “dry” — it’s a more welcoming entry point than one might think, and a fantastic place to visit whether or not one is acquainted with the likes of Corpus Hermeticum or not. This water isn’t clear, but drink deep.