I arrived at this release expecting something pretty post-rock / proggy. The EP’s title is more than a mouthful (which some may suggest is a waste), as the individual song titles – ‘Shatner’s Rhapsody’, ‘By The Power of Grayskull’, ‘Spooky Action Across Distance’ follow the same cumbersome lines. And that’s precisely what 3DFR, as they’re also referred to, deliver. And more besides.
They’re masters of the long, slow build, the ambient passages that burst into big guitar-led crescendos. They know how to soar. They do driving. They do ethereal, atmospheric, majestic. The aforementioned ‘Shatner’s Rhapsody’ occupies nine expansive minutes and transitions from slow drone, through kaleidoscopic flickers, before rupturing into a monolithic blanket of guitars that burn, dense with distortion.
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Elsewhere, jazz drumming and wandering bass grooves underpin chiming mathy guitar lines find the Edinburgh act conform to type and reveal their debt to Explosions in the Sky and Mogwai. But, across the span of this EP, they also reveal themselves to be innovative and exciting, expanding genre parameters. If you think instrumental post-rock is done, 3DFR give reason to think again.
3 Days from Retirement Online
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