Ballerino – Ballerino (2016)

I don’t care what you say, my desk is tidy. To the pedantic amongst you, it would probably look like a pile of shit everywhere. But you’re probably the same people who can’t see the 3d image in those Magic Eye pictures. Because you could ask me where the hole-puncher is and I’ll have it in my hand within seconds. Ink refill, four seconds. Double adapter, don’t even have to move my head, two seconds and it’s in my right hand. To the untrained eye my desk is remiss, but actually it’s actually very organised.

And that’s how I feel about Ballerino‘s self-titled LP. It has the stripped back, loose and lack-of-a-care nature of garage rock, but the precision and organisation that comes with jazz, math rock and prog. ‘Luis Y Guz’ is a stellar example: the track begins with cool jangling guitars jamming over an even tempo, only to transform into a frenetic and wildly punctuated experimental jazz fest. The slack nature of tracks like ‘Ai WeiWei’ are at odds with, say, the complex instrumental stylings of track six (which, with true lack of care is simply entitled ‘Track 6’). Ballerino is loose but on-point tight. It’s untidy but it’s tidy. It combines the elements of two polarizing musical styles into a weird but ultimately delightful soup.

I don’t care what you say. Maybe it’s the desk in me talking, but Ballerino is one of my favourite albums of this year.

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