Exposé Online banner

Exposé Online

Not just outside the box, but denying the existence of boxes.
Covering music from the fringes since 1993.

Reviews

Pili Coït / Yowie — Split
(Skin Graft GR162, 2025, 7" / CD / DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2025-05-27

Split Cover art

This split release features two bands united mostly by their association with Skin Graft Records. While both qualify as avant-rock, they are quite different in most ways. For their three tracks, Pili Coït’s core duo is augmented with a group called Les Exocrines to become a seven-member “contemporiental rockestra”: Jessica Martin Maresco (drums, vocals), Guilhem Meier (guitar, vocals), Alice Perret (viola), Stef Giner (violin), Gregory Juillard (tuba), Lea Maquart (kaval, a Balkan wooden flute), and Pierre Horckmans (bass clarinet). The lead track, “Karseh,” takes its lyrics from an Aramaic version of the Bible’s “Song of Songs,” and the erotic subject matter ties in with the group’s other work, like Love Everywhere. The Middle Eastern flavor is on display, both in the vocals and the instrumental parts, though that Pili Coït roughness is there in the rhythm parts with Maresco’s junk percussion and Meier’s distorted guitar. The other tracks, “Mzi” and “Min Neqba,” are musically in a similar vein, and I’m reminded of how another Lyon band, PoiL, brought Japanese influences into their brand of complex avant-rock; Pili Coït does the same thing with Persian sounds. Yowie is an American math-rock band, and they give us three live tracks full of their mind-boggling and intense music. We last encountered them on the album Synchromysticism, but the only musician remaining from that album is drummer Shawn "Defenestrator" O'Connor. His cohorts these days are guitarists Jack Tickner and Daniel Ephraim Kennedy, but the style hasn’t changed a bit. It’s all rhythm and no melody, but they never ever get into a groove. There may be some repeating patterns, but they’re all off kilter and full of changes in meter. The guitar parts feature a lot of non-tonal aspects, and often the only thing that makes sense about the music is that the three of them and together very precisely. Based on my previous experience with the band, I would have never suspected that O’Connor could find other guitarists to play this music, but I was certainly wrong. In fact, if I hadn’t read the liner notes, I’d think it was the same band. In short, this split is a great offering from two of the most interesting bands in current avant-rock.

Filed under: New releases, 2025 releases

Related artist(s): Yowie, Guilhem Meier / LFant, Pili Coït

More info
http://pilicoit.bandcamp.com/album/split

 

What's new

These are the most recent changes made to artists, releases, and articles.