Loqto – Replication (2015)

When the surprisingly elusive Loqto dropped their first demo in 2013, a small pocket of the internet community’s ears lit up, including mine. It was around that time that Japanese post rock and math rock was an enigma, fronted valiantly by acts like toe, Uchu Conbini and tricot. It is now 2015, and we have established better connectivity with our friends in the Middle North, and it is clear that the Japanese scene is very much alive.

So Loqto’s debut album, Replication, couldn’t have come at a better time. Rather than throw angular guitar melodies over 4/4 time, as is the Japanese post rock norm, the Tokyo three piece instead relish in more complex structural ditherings: impetuous tempo changes, stop-start dynamics and wild syncopation (refer to the misleadingly titled closing track, ‘4/4’). The result is a combination of the crisply toned guitar melodies of Mirror with the more frenetic structures of sajjanu and yoso-wa-yoso.

Overall, Replication is perhaps everything we’d expect from the contemporary Japanese math rock scene, an idyllic assault on the brain. The colours of the rainbow punching you in the face. You know.

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