Tussle’s Cream Cuts Taste Like…Mitchum?

I’ve had some mind trips on the San Francisco’s electro-whatever outfit Tussle lately. A spiel for Wired, a review for Metromix. I still haven’t been able to wrap my head around their beats, which are too bouncy for such darkness. An homage to Night of the Hunter that feels too bright to be dark, but is still strange enough to be attractive? Brain freeze. You decide.

MP3: Tussle’s Mitchum-Less “Night of the Hunter”
Charles Laughton’s mind-boggling 1955 film Night of the Hunter has gone viral. Although it was deemed a failure upon its release, the passage of time has revealed its ingenuity and influence, and not just in film. Musicians have cited it at length, including Springsteen, The Clash, Murder City Devils, Chumbawumba, The Pogues and now Tussle, the San Francisco quartet whose recent effort Cream Cuts dropped last week. MORE @ WIRED

Tussle, Cream Cuts
A hypnotic but jarring stack of danceable tracks for your ass and brain, “Cream Cuts” is an acquired taste for sure, but worth the trouble. The angular bass of “Abacba” feels lifted from the Talking Heads classic “Psycho Killer,” but the spare soundtracking and airy synths sound like they just flew in from Tortoise’s stellar “TNT.” “Third Party” is a tweaker’s paradise, shot through with feedback, fuzz, whistles and ambient atmospherics that are as destabilizing as they are psychedelic. The otherworldly thump of “Rainbow Claw” would make a good soundtrack for a spacewalk. But the tracks can sometimes bleed into one another, a common problem with instrumentals. MORE @ METROMIX