#SRCZ Music Review // Cheatahs – ‘紫(Murasaki) EP’
Cheatahs’ forthcoming EP ‘紫 (Murasaki)’ packs
a lot of pretty cool punch into its brief running time and the experience keeps
on getting better according to our Editor…
Concept releases can go one
of two ways according to this listener. That is to say, they can soar into your
subconsciousness with an uncommon ease or fall flat on their face under topics
that don’t resonate easily. Cheatahs’ Murasaki EP though is an instant winner.
Coming hot on the heels of a full length album in 2014 and a previous EP
release it’s a surprisingly fresh product that sounds genuinely magic given the
highly literate reference.
Scholars of Japanese
history may have come across the name of Murasaki Shikibu previously but for
those who haven’t she is the author of The Tale of Genji, one of the world’s
first novels still considered to be a classic, and is thought to have died in
the year 1025. In a time when women had very little standing in society and
even less access to education the book is itself a remarkable and justifiably significant
event. But how does that connect to music released almost ten centuries later?
Over the course of the EP
the band, all from various places around the world, explore their own journeys
and ideas and in this sense, there is a parallel. Although the 紫(Murasaki) EP is
far from the well over 1000 page tome that is The Tale of Genji, the themes of
looking around the world are present and correct. In a city like London, where
the band is based, it’s impossible not to take in the world and that feeling
imbues the music.
Opening track ‘Murasaki’ is
an addictive slice of atmospheric rock imbued dream pop in its pure ease of
listening. The lyrics, semi sung in Japanese for those with a keen ear, imagine
the first meeting of American-Japanese bassist Dean Reid’s parents and the song
as a whole, with the electric squeal of its guitar lines, is a definite expansion
of the band’s sound.
The music goes in other directions
as the EP continues, from the self consciously off kilter to the anthem like
choruses that often take the form of little more than a well manipulated guitar
line. Wash Out, as the closer, has a positional duty that it more than fulfils with
the constant shift in focus from the aforementioned effect soaked guitar lines to
the very much there but perfectly mysterious vocals.
An EP like ‘紫(Murasaki)’ is rare
in its productive intensity and as such the four tracks contained within work
as their own narrative structure in some ways which makes the habit of choosing
a highlight a difficult one. This writer is keen on the whole and would recommend
the listener to listen with headphones in a typical morning Tube crowd
situation just to get a sense of the intensity of much of the record.
‘紫(Murasaki)’ is released on
May 4th 2015 via Wichita Recordings.
(Sebastian Gahan)
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