Taggart and Rosewood - The Killingest (2015)

The Killingest is the debut album from Taggart & Rosewood. Zach Coulter (Solid Gold) and Ryan Olson (Polica) who previously collaborated in Gayngs are the core members with Jim Eno (Spoon) accompanying on drums.

The leading track Came and You Saw begins with an ominous electronic-laced beat slowly building to a horror movie type anticipation. Drums and guitar kick in for a broader sound while synth beats still very much dominate. This feeling of spaced-out consciousness is a recurring theme throughout the album and can also be heard in tracks like Believe. The piercing shrill of samples used is reminiscent of a Hitchcock classic while distorted vocals add to the eeriness. Just as the listener begins to slip into a state of delirium we are jolted awake by the clever injection of an upbeat bridge.

This album is very much in the realms of futurism with tracks like Talk Too Much and Salt in the Wound. Both are introduced with a slow, rhythmic beat accompanied by a heavily distorted, robotic-like vocal. The same pattern of a state of trance being shaken by a bold boost of sound is repeated here.

Samantha Corrie is the second track from the Minneapolis duo and has just been released on AV Club who described it as “a lumbering, auto-tuned trip into the deepest recesses of the mind.”

This track maintains the same disoriented feeling as the previous songs. For those club-land lovers of the mid 90’s/early noughties this track will be the one for you with its heavily synthesised beats, echoing samples and nightmarish undertone.

The Killingest offers a mixed bag from the sweet melody in The Kink to the upbeat dancefloor-filler Hell to Pay. The variations of sound and beats sampled on this album make it difficult to categorize. The dark, sci-fi atmosphere of the album along with the processed effects on instruments and synthesized samples would tie it more to ‘techstep’ a popular 90’s sub-genre of dubstep. It’s hard to pull any concrete meaning from this album but that’s where the cleverness lies, allowing the listener to lose themselves time after time in eleven disorienting tracks that bring you to the darkest depths of your psyche.

The Killingest is due out this month on Totally Gross National Product.