RATATAT are clearly geezers who feel there's room for enigmas in built up areas. Collectively they are called Mike Stroud and Evan Mast and despite being picked up by Interpol's Paul Banks to support our favourite NYC moodists Stateside recently, sound absolutely nothing like you might imagine. At least on the basis os the two tracks making up this intriguing, pigeonhole-dummying 12" debut.
Indeed, instead of the wrought, wracked vocals and expansively doomy soundscapes that usually inhabit Interpol's records, with "Seventeen Years" we are introduced by an abrasive voice-over by a young, 17-year old rapper - apparently describing his raison d'etre - before big, primitive breakbeats kick in, along with synths and a heavily-treated guitar playing what sounds like Elizabethan madrigal chords. Then, there's more bitten-off phased guitar, before finally the whole thing wigs out further and becomes expansively moody with soothing, pitch-bending strains leading us to an open-ended conclusion.
Confused? Yeah, well you probably will be, but I tell you what: you'll surely wanna hear it again, not to mention the flipside "Breaking Away", where this time the deafening drum machine lets rip with soft-sucking hi-hat and bloopy beats (akin to the lonely, primitive drum programme that slogs through Joy Division's strange "As You Said") before joining hands with some soulful, downbeat organ and phased guitar. Somnolent, melancholy and weirdly gracious, it's post-rock of sorts, but still tantalisingly different.
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Whether it's even remotely like what they'll do over an album, of course, remains to be seen, but then that's part of the attraction. Whatever, both these tracks are really rather fascinating and suggest that - for now at least - Ratatat are an enigma machine who won't easily allow you access to their code books.
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