Wot Gorilla? - New Arrival [EP]

Label: Idle Hands Club Release date: 06/12/2010 Website: Myspace Buy: Amazon New signings to the Idle Hands record label, Halifax’s Wot Gorilla? release their second EP New Arrival, produced by none other than James Kenosha, the mastermind behind Pulled Apart By Horses and Dinosaur Pile-Up’s incendiary sounds, it tops off a year that saw the band play shows at the Reading and Leeds festivals, as well as at the celebrated Brainwash festival. 80 seconds of instrumental math-rock riffs and breakdowns kick off the EP on ‘Fear Of Flying’. When they come in, Mat Heighton’s angelic vocals are at odds with these dense sounds, and remind me of Grammatics’ Owen Brinley’s fragile tones. Although Mat demonstrates he can scream with the best, as the song slowly morphs into a mixture of British emo and Minus The Bear. There’s stop-start sections, odd time signatures, riffs and dual vocal attacks. There’s a real sincerity in his voice when he sings “we’ll live to see another day”. On the band’s Twitter, they claim to ‘write songs/pieces of music that you can’t dance to’, and the jerked ending to this piece helps the band stand up to this claim. The curious beast of an ‘Interlude’ follows, complete with backwards effects, and it is strangely mesmerising and definitely enticing. A fitting segue to the more melodic tones of ‘Shoes For Traction’, which begins all post-rock and widescaping a la Explosions In The Sky, before the halfway point marks where the track seems to go into transition. Machine-gun drumming signals the start of a more mathy sound, accompanied by the lines: “breaking down much, I find my way out of the box”. As this is sung, the music becomes increasingly feverish and head-turning, with the final section showcasing their eye for technical post-rock talent. The final track on the EP, ‘3 DAB’s And A Chang’ is a bit calmer and has almost a ‘pop’ song opening, but this doesn’t last long – the guitars are soon turned up and forceful vocals are screamed, demanding your attention. Wot Gorilla? have played with both 65daysofstatic and Wild Beasts, and on this song, they comfortably fill the no man’s land between these two very different bands. An EP that brings an innovative sound and fresh vigour, people won’t be asking Wot Gorilla? for long, they’ll soon know who they are.