| Alpha
Sounds LP/CD |
 |
|
2 The Unoffical Guide To Back Stabbing
3 Window Washer Mafia
4 Explode Again
5 Divorce Yourself
6 Playing Chandeliers
7 Conceit Needs Concentration
8 Ahh Ritalin
9 New Future Ride
10 Slide
As Nineties media finally disintegrated rock and roll, cultural and social stagnation seemed imminent. Fortunately in the Autumn of 1997, ex Thumbnail guitarist/vocalist Justin Sinkovich and drummer David Burns took refuge under the moniker Atombombpocketknife with other Chicago resident, Allison Hollihan. Becoming the principal catalyst in creating Unrock - the deconstruction of traditional rock principles, then reconstruction of future templates for the new rock and roll renaissance - Atombombpocketknife's mission became crystal. David has since left the band, but luckily drummer Matt Espy had moved to Chicago and ABPK was his undeniable future.
With their first mini album, these three champions of punk `un'rock (what-would-have-been-called-emo-five-years-ago-but-can-now-be-called-rock) delivered six super smart songs whose subtly aggressive pop hooks caused the more learned amongst us to think of Love and Rockets, Wire and Unwound. Alpha Sounds is the band's debut full length recorded at Greg Norman's new home studio on the south side of Chicago during November 1999. Alpha Sounds builds on the unrock foundations laid down by their previous six-tracker adding perhaps a dash of Sonic Youth and Girls Against Boys to their angular atonal pop twistings.
Explain Alpha Sounds?! That's asking for a glass boat in a black river, a source of direction to an infinitely bottomless and obtuse diagram. Alpha Sounds is an equation with more variables than letters in the Greek alphabet. "Alpha" = the first Greek letter, a charged particle spanning the music knowledge of the overexposed and previously unfulfilled salient points. "Sounds" = the effect of tones from vibrations in the air around us - sonic manipulations from the manipulated. The following is a conceptual answer to the turnkey question, "manipulated by what?", with an incomplete explanation of sources leading to the social conditioning of: Allison and Justin and Matt = Atombombpocketknife.
"Twisted guitar genius from Chicago, this bucks and rolls like prime time Sonic Youth duelling with Girls Against Boys" - Rocksound UK 1999
