New New Wave (Post Post Punk?): Guitar + Electronics (MP3s)

There’s “Mikale,” in which a jackboot rhythm gives way to a jangle of sliding notes and elastic dubby effects (MP3). Then “Hissatsu Folder,” with its broken-speaker-cone guitar feedback atop a hospital beep, eventually subsiding into something less dub and more akin to cash-register juju (MP3). And then there is “Before Pale,” in which a strummed guitar with an insistent pulse, buttressed with new-wave echo, pits itself against a terse, occasional bass line and a rising whorl of noise, like nothing so much as an early Cure song (MP3).

With these three very different songs, the excellent collection Cymbals by Joshua Treble sets up its tools, its process, and its destination: guitar and electronics, edging toward monotone pop. A brief liner note states, simply: “Recordings from 2008 & 2009. Please play loud and alone.” It’s easily one of the most confident netlabel releases thus far this year, filled with simple gestures that are then given time to develop, like how in “Braille Cassette” the lead line slowly maneuvers its way out of the background (MP3), or how the sinewy white-noise melody of “Two Two Wives” ekes out its own space through repetition and stasis (MP3).

Get the fulls set of ten tracks for free at notype.com and archive.org.

More on Treble, aka Tony Boggs, at myspace.com/joshuatreble, though it hasn’t been updated since mid-2010.