Review: Vicious Circus - Troglodytes Troglodytes

Caution is advised. Elo Masing and Dave Maric are boundless improvisatory eccentrics, blowing raspberries and throwing vicious scowls in the direction of moderation and self-assessment. They do as they please: trampolining off of 90s electro-percussion and colliding in mid-air, tickling eachother until violins erupt into little vulpine squeals, freefalling down Matthew Lee Knowles’ spoken passages of mathematical/philosophical gorging. They run their tongues along unsightly dissonance and throw colourful splashes of sci-fi synthesiser over their own heads. Troglodytes Troglodytes gets hyperactive to the point of juvenile and then plummets into the indulgently grotesque; either way, I’m reluctant to get too close.

Judging by the acoustics, the record was probably recorded in a small cabin somewhere. Potentially one that Masing and Maric hadn’t left for weeks. On “Beard Olympics”, a violin suffers a coughing fit while a cyborg gasps and looks on helplessly, while a metronomic pulse starts to rattling the beams above and any loose nails within them. On “Parents Were Cousins”, the duo sway back and forth on the world’s most unoiled seesaw, brandishing shit-eating grins as the mechanism wails and complains. That’s the thing about Vicious Circus. When they find a wound, they waggle their fingers in it until it opens up and starts to bleed profusely – it could be an irritating noise, or a virally infective rhythm loop. The album becomes a catalogue of indulgence without restraint.