It's kind of hard to put in words why I like this album; I certainly love Ex Libras' way of mixing several elements of Rock with more classic instrumentals, various Hip-Hop beats and altogether random sounds; and in many ways their style is eerily similar to Radiohead's. Some tracks can be plain quirky, such is the case of "Sum Numbers", it's a mix of beautiful piano work, blazing guitar riffs and haunting vocals that tend to cut into each other more than smoothly transition; it is the most enigmatic piece in this album for me and it stands as a hate-it-or-love-it track often leaving you asking "why?" yet still worth a listen. The length of the album is pretty surprising: it's only comprised of 8 tracks but lasts 46 minutes; with songs like "Phat Nickers", "Audio Video Disco" and "19:04" spanning more than 8 minutes and others such as "Issues" and "Discharge" lasting less than a minute and a half, you get quite a full range of sounds from this one. "Radar" is the all out winner of the album with a perfect run time of 3:23 followed closely, if not tied, with "Underachiever". "Phat Nickers" is the only track that feels sadly out of place in the overall experience. "Slow burn" is a fairly adequate way of describing the album; songs ebb and flow before getting to the vocals and end with for the most part with a boom. All in all this is a great debut album for a band with much promise; still pretty good for something that was entirely recorded in a garden shed.
Xero & The Boombox Theorists
