I found AWSTS while trolling round Soundcloud looking for nuggets to feed to the parasites whose insistent, greedy ears force us to continue making rubbish podcasts. Much like MySpace, nine out of ten of the artists there are utterly worthless, so it’s a pretty gruelling process finding nice stuff. It’s this gruel that makes it so much more rewarding when you find things like AWSTS. An acronym for “anata wa sukkari tsukarete shimai” or “you are completely tired” they have named themselves aptly because they make music that seems to exist between wakefulness and sleep.
Taking found sounds, electronica, “regular” instrumentation and poetry they create a blend of all things without ever sounding like they truly belong there. The subdued vocals of “Cataract” are paired with sparse instrumentation to create a truly lovely song which then gives way sporadically to bursts of weird electronica. The song would be much better without these electronic bits but the spirit of experimentation is what led them there in the first place so you have to bear with them. “Bearskins” is another frustrating example of their wares. A great song that sounds too much like the collective ideas of three people rather than the harmoniously distilled essence of a band, it is nonetheless a really brilliant song (even with poetry bits in and I fucking hate poetry because I’m a swine). This is a flawed EP but the flaws somehow make this more appealing and I look forward to hearing what they do next. Get the album here :
http://bearsuitrecords.webs.com/
Kim Monaghan
