SLVDR / MOMA – Split (2015)

We really are in the digital age if two bands 17,500 kilometers apart can come together to record a split. Perhaps it isn’t a surprise to see Brazil’s SLVDR and Japan’s MOMA collaborating in this highly connected world of ours. And this fine new EP also suggests that the bands are speaking similar languages musically.

SLVDR open the split with an eclectic range of instrumental work that is sonically beguiling and structurally bewildering. The track is sure to keep the listener busy trying to parse its many intricacies, as the band unapologetically soar through a range of musical wheelies. MOMA take hold of the baton in the second half and treat the listener to their piano-rich and always smile-coercing melodic propensity. Some readers will no doubt recognize the second of MOMA’s tracks, ‘SUN’, from our very first Fecking Bahamas compilation I. Japan. In MOMA’s newest rendition, however, the sharper quality of the track’s guitar phrases provide a more vibrant texture against the piano keys. It’ll make you want to feed birds.

The sheer ambition associated with merging niche bands from separate hemispheres into one piece of 7″ wide vinyl, as Tightwolf Records have done, is laudable. If you were looking for nice double cut of continental math rock, lo.