The Vienna trio Shampoo Boy will release their sophomore LP Crack on April 6th via Blackest Ever Black. The group finds Editions Mego label head Peter Rehberg, a long tenured ambient and drone-based musician who, amongst many other projects, collaborates with Stephen O’Malley in KTL, joining forces with guitarist Christian Schachinger, and bassist Christina Nemec–both, longstanding sound experimenters in their own right. “Spalt“, all the titles here translate along the lines of “gap”, “crack”, “break”, suggestive of their interstitial approach to improvised, ambient-centered music, is our first listen in on the upcoming record. From near silent beginnings, the trio spins a web, quickly catching Rehberg’s moth-like fluttering of electronics in it’s delicate architecture. As the track progresses though, Nemec’s bass opens up deep subterranean rumblings, as the raspy electronics thrash in this web’s death-hold. Eventually, Schachinger’s guitar brings a more human pulse of life, as a simple repeated guitar phrase mounts rhythmically, but it’s just one more thing for “Spalt”‘s black spider to devour. And it does so with brutal indifference. Powerful stuff, indeed!
