Rogyapa
Ghettoblaster Sessions
New Jersey sky burial functionaries Rogyapa don’t telegraph their punch as much as send you a fax, a text and possibly shell out for a billboard to advertise their Discordance Axis aspirations with an opening cover of “Castration Rite.”
Eschewing a bassist, the band shoots for that same sleek, technical vibe that pervaded Jouhou and The Inalienable Dreamless, but they haven’t unlocked Rob Marton’s flair for hacking memorable tunes out of blasting chaos. The 15 and 20 second splinters of shrapnel they call songs lack the varied facets and sharp edges that elevated Discordance Axis over their peers. Instead, Rogyapa build each song around a single musical notion, following it to its logical conclusion. While that means the band never overextends their ideas, the songs also lack movement or growth. The obligatory downtrodden number “STD” (not the last song for a change!) gets in and out in 90 seconds and isn’t too much of a disruption.
The name Ghettoblaster Sessions isn’t just an affectation; the band tells me it’s a literal description of how they recorded their seven song demo. So expect a tinny, smushed live recording that’s festooned with keening guitar feedback. That also works against the band because the guitars often get swallowed in the noise, devouring any subtlety.
With some maturity and an actual studio, I could see Rogyapa flourishing in the increasingly crowded post-DxAx field. You can download Ghettoblaster Sessions here.
6 comments:
You had me at Ghettoblaster
dig it.
Everything in the description tells me I'll like it, but I just can't get in to the stuff on their Myspace. Guess I'll have to wait 'til they've polished themselves a little bit, musicianship-wise.
hey nigel, i've got another discordance wannabe lined up for next week. a little more together. that may be more to your thing.
i'm getting tons of demos from kids aping dxax. it's a beautiful thing in a way.
Hey dudes, Ed from Rogyapa here. I was rereading some comments about the demo and just wanted to clear up that we were never trying to be a Discordance Axis worship band by any means... The only reason that song was even on the demo was because it just so happened to be the first song we rehearsed that day - we would juggle about 8 covers at any given time, ranging from Toxic Narcotic to SxOxB to Repulsion to Disrupt. By all means, however, if people are thinking we're even comparable to DxAx it's a huge compliment, even if they do think we suck!! All of the material we've put out were jams we recorded for personal listening, but since my drummer left the band I decided to release them as actual "demos" (hah). At any rate the 2nd one can be downloaded at http://www.mediafire.com/?q1x5qxejwzeeqj6
Thanks so much for listening to our shit!!
-Ed
haha.
must be the power of suggestion, ed. leading off with "castration rite" really influenced how i heard the rest of the album. i'll have to check out the second and see how it compares.
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