SQUARELOUD B.T.T.B

Gosh golly, my oh my, I haven't anything like this in a long time. It's a kind of sound that I suppose the world was first exposed to when Justice were first on the scene in like, I dunno, 2006/7. Whatever, it was in the past, quite a while ago, at the same kind of time when the joke-genre "nu rave" was being simultaneously reviled and revered. Ahhhhhh, those were the days...

In a sense, they were the days, but the days are also now. Each new day that goes by is another day of experiencing the music of the past for the music-makers of the present. They are standing on the shoulders of giants - every creatively inclined person who gets inspired by a sound from the past does this. Perhaps it's a little melodramatic to say that, but the sentiment is there: the past helps to create the future.

Anyway, Beijing-based duo (I think it's a duo, judging from the picture) SquareLoud has brought to the table a wondrous sound, reminiscent of Justice's electro-rock vibe except it's fresh and new, with no memories yet attached to it, more dynamic, epic-sounding, less-dance-oriented. Yes, it really is a fantastic piece of work. Turn your headphones or speakers up and prepared to get blown away, this is 'B.T.T.B'.

Pure electro-rock. It is a wonderfully noisy medley of distorted synths and deep slap bass to begin with, decorated with silver-glistening string sounds piercing over the top of the melting-pot foundations. Many breaks in the song give it great dynamism, with different parts literally grabbing your attention, introducing different sounds like a showcase of just how much they can do creatively. We get different overarching overdriven melodies screeching, with a full, epic sound before we reach the middle, where the distortion becomes brutally crunchy, chopped up to the rhythm of a wild punchy beat that's been twisted and tamed. The second half holds yet more variations, chopped stuck-record sounds and glitched-out synths, an orchestral cacophony of electro virtuosity.

I do not know what BTTB stands for, but as you can tell, I quite like it. The song kinda grabs a hold of you, shakes you, puts you down - perhaps this is what "future rock" (one of the tags for the song on SoundCloud) is supposed to do to you. Either way, I'm excited to hear where they will take this already nicely matured, energetic, and energising, sound.

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