Rumour Cubes - ‘We Have Sound Houses Also’

Rumour Cubes are a London based sextet, violin and viola augment and expand a traditional two guitar, bass and drums line up, that make hugely epic, musically dense, cinematic instrumental rock soundscapes. This brings inevitable comparisons with the likes of Godspeed! You Black Emperor and other exponents of the genre but they manage to carve out a sound that is uniquely their own.

‘We Have Sound Houses Also’ is made up of three tracks that showcase their scope, imagination and talent supremely well. Opener ‘The University Is A Factory’ starts gently, the two string players in tandem weaving a gorgeous tapestry which is the supplemented by ebowed guitar, adding a suspenseful tension that is heightened two minutes in as the drums and bass make an appearance and the tune starts to unfurl until eventually a brutal piece of riffage drops like a giant wave crashing against a beach.

‘Rain On Titan’ has more rhythmic urgency than its predecessor and again the strings are used to great effect, adding beautiful melodic colour to the canvas set down by the drums and bass until once again heavy guitars crescendo and whisk the listener off to that special mental place reserved for the more intense flights of fancy. Well, in my head anyway!

While these two tracks are good it’s the final track, ‘At Sea’, that is truly breathtaking and marks these guys out as ones to watch out for in the coming months. It perhaps lacks the ferocious intensity of the other two tracks but has greater melodic sophistication, building upon achingly lovely interplay between the strings, creating an incredible sense of wistful melancholy that just makes me want to listen to it over and over. Phenomenal.

Live they accompany the music with a spectacular array of specially commissioned visuals that take the whole experience to another level and the EP can be downloaded for free from their Bandcamp or you can buy a physical copy that comes with a poster and in a handmade case made from recycled material. It’s this kind of thinking, about how to offer your fans something different and something special, about how to negotiate the choppy waters of the ‘new’ music business, that gives them more of a chance at success than most.

All in, ‘We Have Sound Houses Also’ is an extremely promising set from a band that appear to have a really clearly defined sense of what they are about and what they are trying to achieve.

Orders Of The British Empire - Act 2

Orders Of The British Empire really need to be seen live to appreciate them in all their ample majesty but failing that then ‘Act 2’, surprisingly the band’s second EP, is a good taster to whet your appetite.

While all four and a half tracks are pretty damn fine it is the opening ‘When Machines Fall Silent’ that is truly breathtaking in its scope and grandeur. Mixing pig and beauty in equal measure it opens with industrial samples over a thumping, almost 65Days ish, beat, a brooding bassline and gorgeous glittering guitars but it’s not long before they let rip with the serious artillery and some crushingly heavy riffage. And then halfway in, like sunshine after the storm, it all swirls down to reveal a heartbreakingly pure piano line before building and building once more to a glorious crescendo. Seven and a half minutes of pure magic.

Sadly, ‘Machines’ is so good, so utterly resplendent that what follows pales slightly in comparison. Not to say that any of it is bad, not by a long shot, but it just never again quite scales the heights of what has gone before.

‘Cor-tastrophe’ is a very different kettle of cetacean, starting as it does with a dramatic reading of Jonah’s story from the bible before slowly, slowly over its opening four minutes before soaring off in to the stratosphere and then coming down the other side with an intricate, mathy entwining of guitars.

‘Freaky Jackson’ is possibly the most ‘post rock by numbers’ track in the collection and separated from closer ‘Beksinski’ by the brooding interlude that is ‘{}’ and another use of a great piece of sampled dialogue. It’s only really on this last track though that OBE come close to repeating the triumph of ‘Machines’, crashing out of ‘{}’ with a heavy as hell riff it then strips down to some lovely wailing guitar before one last valiant swoop of beauty.

All in all, a hugely enjoyable EP that promises plenty more to come. However I still advise you to see them live and it will all make so much more sense.