Piscine – Olympique (2015)

In the best traditions of the punk/experimental rock genre, Piscine‘s Olympique would make an awesome skate video soundtrack. Think of the irreverent young dudes of 90s skate vids – recall the grainy quality and throwaway design aesthetic, the brutal dedication, the generally awesome and exhausted time they seemed to be having, laughing as they narrowly avoid massive head trauma. Punk as feck. Piscine is French for ‘swimming pool’. The etymology trail goes fish – fish pond – swimming pool. Another link to skating right there.

Start with classic rock. Throw in some stoner, some deep, blues cadences; put some punk balls on show – the Fugazi focus, Pavement humor; keep it hard rocking, nail the tempo and fuzz; but go on a trance inducing psychedelic krautrock detour. Mind you, that irreverent, crispy guitar sound is straight outta math rock origin – speaks of Hella at times.

I am reminded of eddies in the water; subtle changes unnoticed at first. The devil is in the detail – ripples from the infant’s armbands become, through the infant’s eyes, tsunamis and whirlpools that have a very real danger… The subtlety of structure is disguised by a no nonsense performance – ‘Plongeoir’ evolves into a hardcore wonk beatdown before you even realise.

So now I’m headed to the skatepark to try my powerslides in the rain slick pool, and Piscine will accompany me and hopefully lend me their balls.