Time for another excursion into the land of lo-fi. This time I turn my ears toward “Dot Rotten” by Blackpool band Uncle Paul. So, what is there to be said about the six songs that make up this EP.
I suppose that it would be fair to call Uncle Paul a rock band. Certainly, they have the guitar riffs and the attitude but there is more here than the posturing and volume worship that you might expect. Their influences draw from metal and prog which is, of course, pretty much par for the course these days yet there is something else here and that something else is an unusual sense of dramatic intensity. That dramatic intensity drama becomes the selling point for the band for, as the songs ramble inexorably on their journey, they gain both purpose and a near punk level of ferocity and, even when Uncle Paul throw in something seemingly misplaced like the awkwardly humorous and tempo shifting “Tiffany”, the band seem more like smiling psychopaths looking for a diversion than merely a band making a wrong turn.
All in all, this EP was rather more interesting than I had thought it would be and that’s the kind of surprise that I like.
I bet they sound like this on stage too.
The EP is available from Bandcamp.