"X, Part I"-Schnellertollermeier
Ever sort of curious what Swans would sound like if Michael Gira finally embraced the animal within and lit out for the territories? Swiss trio Schnellertollermeier’s jazz rock freak out “X” conjures up what I imagine that glorious racket would sound like. They toy with the same prog rock pomposity as Swans, penning tracks with titles like “Love in the Time of Cholera” and likening themselves to “classical literature” on their Bandcamp site, but there is nothing bloated or excessive about the aggressive, stripped down assault of bass, drums, and guitar that makes up “X.” Schnellertollermeier’s debut on Cuneiform Records, was released last week but the tracks on it, including “X,” have been in their live rotation since 2013. Part I of that 20 minute-long behemoth, featured here, builds from a skittering guitar figure atop cymbals to a noisy squall and back again. The track runs the gamut from pissed-off punk thrash to a surprisingly danceable chug. These recognizable clearings in the song stay around just long enough to lull us into a false sense of security, before we are plunged back again into an impenetrable thicket of drums and guitar.
Schnellertollermeier may look like a bunch of stuffed shirts (no, seriously, they’re almost painfully earnest in their live performances), but there is nothing academic or pretentious about their sound. In “X” they’ve managed to yoke the frenetic energy of punk to the musicianship of jazz. More importantly: they sound cool as hell doing it.
-Peter Schultz