P.L.X.T.X, TIME

If your “music” absolutely must have melodies and sweetly-sung vocals and nice, clean production, well, you’re going to want to stay far, far the fuck away from P.L.X.T.X’s debut EP, TIME.

If, on the other hand, you’re willing to listen to music that’s rough and abrasive and confrontational as hell but still drags you along for the ride, then hey, this may be your thing. As for me, I went into TIME as a skeptic and crawled out the other side as a believer, firmly in that latter category.

It helps that I’m a big Atari Teenage Riot fan, because Bradley Muñoz’s P.L.X.T.X project — which is apparently meant to be pronounced “Pluto,” automatically making me like it even more — sounds like it was pretty hugely influenced by ATR and Alec Empire’s other tangential efforts, with the messy, skittering, speaker-shredding breakbeats, bursts of jagged noise, and shouted/howled vocals that explode out of the headphones here.

Muñoz (who you might know from his two-man noise-punk band Female Demand, by the way) wields that sound expertly, creating a wall of noise that manages to be both threatening and hypnotic. The five tracks on here are relentlessly fucking raw and harsh, yet are all still mesmerizing in their strange, misanthropic way. It’s definitely not pleasant to listen to, by any stretch, but listen past the noise, and the rhythms suck you in and get your head bobbing spastically in time, and that’s never a bad thing in my book.

Opener “Go” is probably the most ATR-like track of the bunch, with its half-buried, repeated exhortations and and dancefloor-shattering rhythms. Beyond that, “A Thousand Eyes Stare” sounds for all the world like a B L A C K I E backing track without the B L A C K I E, while “Rocket Me to Freedom” incorporates some fiendishly sneaky little hints of melody into the squall.

Further on, “Let It Fail” is a pinball made of antimatter careening through some cosmic arcade game, unstoppable and deadly, and closer “Explosions Will Configure This World” follows in “Go”‘s footsteps for about 40 seconds before dissolving into atmospheric, vaguely sinister, head-warping ambient sound.

My recommendation? Let go of all the preconceived bullshit about what music “should” be like and let TIME dropkick you down the rabbit hole, at least for a little while.