ZapTown

xbxrx
Gop Ist Minee
2000 – 5RC
Origin: Mobile, Alabama
Style: Noisecore

Gop Ist Minee is the debut release and still the best constructive album from the band’s catalog. More straightforward as opposed to explosively archaically noisy, xbxrx developed into a blistering noisecore band from an unlikely part of the region — Alabama.

Listening to Gop ist Minee, their beginnings make more sense than their current state as they take a lot of their twitchy rhythms, and quick change scenery from their neighbors up the road Man Or Astroman? Or, late-career Man Or Astroman? to be more specific. It could also be the gurgling samples or the geeky vintage game effects that litter the album.

Gop Ist Minee gives us an immediate sense of hyperactive DIY synthetics as the first track (and each track is named after the number of track in sequence; i.e., “Track One,” “Track Two,” Track Three,” and so on) sounds like someone was trying to cover a Pizzicato Five song by using a Casio keyboard. The chirpiness quickly changes until a thrusting movement of junkyard sounds. And when I say quickly, I mean fast. Most of these songs do not make it over two minutes, except one that scrapes past the four-minute mark and meanders into this stoner Led Zeppelin played someone trying to cover the Butthole Surfers interlude before making it’s way back to more unrecognizable terrain, something this band is great at doing.

Even though this may not be music for seizure patients, it’s oddly enough catchy in all aspects, an enjoyment from this band before they dove off the deep end and constructed songs that really took their noisy elements to the extreme.

Cross-Reference: Man Or Astroman?, Clikitat Ikatowi, Arab On Radar