#‘68

[hannibal-or-maybe-just-rex]

‘68: Josh Scogin and Nikko Yamada

[eclown4hire]

started watching one piece!

[elliottwritesreviews]

‘68- Yes, and…

Just how much noise can two people make? ‘68 are clearly on a mission to find out. The Atlanta outfit, comprised of Josh Scogin and Nikko Yamada, formed immediately following the dissolution of The Chariot. After a decade of raucous noise and frenetic live shows, the duad has issued their fourth full-length: …Yes, and.

The track-listing appears to recount a fatal pirate conflict and this chaos persists throughout its 33 minute duration.

With Distance Between opens things on an erratic note, stuttering discordantly through a number of dynamic changes. It’s an odd starting point, as the constant stops and starts diminish the anticipated ferocity and leave things feeling anticlimactic.

The time signature anarchy of Removed Their Hooks evokes Drive Like Jehu as Scogin laments an increasingly bleak political landscape. The frontman elaborated on his creative process saying: “One day while I was in the kitchen making a sandwich, I could hear the news in the distance. They were telling the same ol’ tales of negativity and fear that keep their ratings up and viewers engaged. In response to one of their comments I just said out loud, ‘Well, tell me something that I don’t know.’ This immediately set things in motion.”

An escalating rift builds tension before shifting into a surprising half-time bridge. Though it’s somewhat similar to the previous track, it benefits from a much more effective focus and better payoff. It worked well as a single and continues to do so within the wider context of the album.

There are some interesting tonal shifts in the back-end of the record that serve to break up the initial mayhem, to varying degrees of success.

“End This War” draws on faint elements of doom metal, while They All Agreed takes things in a more typically melodic direction. The latter though, is slightly crowded by a soundscape of riffs and strings. It is somewhat jarring too, when contrasted with the jagged noise rock preceding and may have worked more effectively if placed at a different point in the sequencing.

Within The Hour, They Were No More resumes the previous frenzied discordance in a more accessible way. A distorted melody drifts in and out alongside the lyrics. The last half-second is a fake out, pulling the listener in one final time with the same hook that opened it. It calls to mind the lost art of hidden tracks and ends the tumultuous effort in a full-circle kind of way.

Yes, and… is admirably experimental but lacks the focus that defined the pairs’ early output. It can be hard to distinguish one song from the next and so, plays out more like an improvised jam session than an established record. Similarly, while opaque lyricism is typical of Scogin’s work, Yes, and… has a tendency to get lost in its own esotericism. It’s clear though, that this is the record the duo wanted to make; time signatures and genres be damned and that’s a commendable thing, even if it doesn’t always work out perfectly. Maybe that’s the whole point.

[soberfructosecornsyrup]

‘68’s Yes, And… on red, white, and black A side/B side with white and blue splatter

‘68 knocked another one out the park. Love this band and this album

[dilaofan]

he makes me so sad. look at his sweet face

[jareaau]

Chip Taylor in 68 Kill (2017)

[f80vyxx-m3]

[daily-leon]

[spencahreadreid]

CHIPPPP 😩

[spencers-gun]

mgg as chip taylor (68 kill 2017) will forever be on my mind

[menlove]

[melonyfelonyfellonme]

SINGLE DIGITS ON THE COUNTDOWN

[whoisspence]

[reidsdimples]

Chip Taylor eats it from the back