Review: MONTY – Abol Tabol | আবোল তাবোল
Cataclysmic suggestion and fragmentary beats, in the debut EP from the Dhaka, Bangladesh-based experimental act.
Abol Tabol is a statement of potential. Intensities in waiting. From its fleeting runtime to its fragmentary beats, the EP acts as either the prophecy or the aftermath, pointing to a crescendo that resides just outside of the record's durational frame. Distortion encroaches but doesn't yet smother, as on the melody on opening track "Oh Noble Farmer", while the compositions themselves collapse just as the sentiment seems to be approaching its peak. Take "ভূতুড়ে খেলা [Haunted Games]", whose cyclonic fuzz runs out of spin and dissipates into a high-pitched tinnitus ring – a souvenir from the cataclysm to which MONTY fervently signals, yet never brings into being.
Vocalist kirikirime makes a guest appearance on interlude "Smoke, Smoke". For a moment it feels like the EP might finally be serenaded into a state of unity, only for distortion and detuned harmonies to drag the melody into the gloom mere moments after. The track hits like an upended R&B lullaby – the voice crooning at a disjunct with the arhythmic lurch of the bass, the elements unable to settle upon a common mode of time. Closer "CORRUPTED WIRES OF A BRUTAL CITY" is like a last-ditch attempt to attain coherence through brute force, the drums like hammer blows helplessly knocking holes in ambient fog. On scrutiny the beats seem to have beatbox phonemes tucked into them, like the residue of human casualty from whatever extra-peripheral horrors befell the MONTY universe. Nothing is overexplained, and the suggestions posed by these four pieces prove to be the most powerful imagination fuel.
