ProFraction

Most Responsive To Change

PRODUCIBLE FRACTION

Condensation Records

profraction.com

Review by Chris Geary

Recorded in a hailstorm, this fifth clamorous album by uncivilised but semi-confident Uzbek bagpipe and cello rockers Producible Fraction, offers a sinister compilation of auditory pratfalls led by Barbary Flannels, whose reedy vocals are basically stand-up comedy routines instead of proper song lyrics, with only an unrequited attachment to tunesmith melodies, orchestrated largely by vagabond composer Kirks Pumpkinseed on the pipes.

Devilishly handsome drummer, Lobs Slantwise, makes his presence felt even in your transplanted bone marrow on the first track, Resentfully Yours, which peters away to impish tapping while the warbling choral arrangement of backing singers surges back into screeching range with fruitful indulgence. Thenceforward, this certifiably barmy Asian band’s piercingly abrupt tempo changes dominate typically Turkic rhythms and truculently off-key jingles. Further musical mayhem essayed with Flannels’ stuttering alliteration ensures that single release Fluttering Vindication presents its catchy bass guitar and fluid keyboards with something approaching blasé impudence.  

There are fine tweaks and expostulations to be enjoyed in both Aquaplane Uncoiling, and Shiny Misconception, while Benchmark Wheeze boasts a glorious epic structure. Tallyho Wherewithal is a monumental abstract of pulsating synths but underscored by resounding industrial blasts from Lobs, with Kirks’ uniquely squelching pipe-work as a wholehearted counterpoint. Unobjectionable Credo ends this bellowing rebellion of sublime intransigence with a highly quotable heehaw chorus, ghost-written by that legendary bobble poet Buttons Morden (of Calcified Flange and Slang Muckrakers).  

Most Responsive To Change is not quite a triumph, but its acidic swelter of atrophied bleeps and bloats with collusive binges of bifurcated cello playing manage, somehow, to comment, albeit obliquely, upon the philandering upswing of recent developments in Uzbeks toady rock scene.