Monotract

Trueno Oscuro

Load

Words that spring to mind when listening to New York City noise-wave trio Monotract: smudged, muffled, crushed. The combined, naked fury of Nancy Garcia, Carlos Giffoni, and Roger Rimada doesn’t sound like the byproduct of a rock band—it sounds like the byproduct of a rock band imprisoned within a short-circuiting oscillator, attempting to riddle and bash its way out. Members mumble Spanish and scream English with equal incoherence; detuned strings are struck; electronic currents twist, contort, spackle; the heaving discord is fed through some sort of whack-ass chaos generator. They’re a near-industrial, bicultural mess.

From “Muddy Thunder”—the opener to Trueno Oscuro—you’d be hard-pressed to say there’s been much change in M.O. since 2005’s xprmntl lvrs. It isn’t so much a song as a choppy call-to-arms, a conflation of Melt-Banana circa Cell-Scape and recent Black Dice that can’t wrap up quite quickly enough. Then “Under My Arm” begins, and it’s as though we’ve moved from day into night: a wintery synth figure introduces itself once, then several times, as Garcia—who sounds as nervously on-edge as the listener will come to feel—haltingly conveys instructions like “Look up/Push the button.” It’s an unsettling, immobilizing detour for Monotract, so suspiciously reserved that you keep waiting for all heck to break lose. Nope. The rest of the album proceeds in a think-outside-the-box vein, from “Big N” —a puglistic, buzzing fray of drums and Garcia rapping—to “Mar Rojo,” which can best be described as in-the-red punk-metal.

Raymond Cummings