Thee Reps - Cryptocartography (2025)

Cryptocartography is the long-awaited sophomore album from Thee Reps, a deeper dive into maze-like rhythmic matrices, textures drawn from post-punk and chamber music, and locked-in grooves to get everybody dancing. Thee Reps is a band from NYC that makes infectious, repetitive, instrumental music. They are equal parts five-piece rock band and chamber group, made up of violin/viola, electric piano, synthesizer, electric bass, and drum kit. Thee Reps has been gigging around NYC since 2015. Their second album finds the group changing their sonic palette, with Dave Ruder shifting from guitar to synthesizer (necessitated by health, not by choice), which in turn moved Sam Morrison from synthesizer to electric piano. Andie Tanning’s violin playing is augmented with her gnarly viola lead lines in some tracks. In the rhythm section, Jeff Tobias (rock solid on the electric bass) plays the straight man to Mike McCurdy’s exuberant and expressive drumming. Greg Saunier of Deerhoof mixed the album and elevated it as a creature of the studio. The colors on this album are subtler and more complex than on their debut, with each band member writing at least one track. A song like Tanning’s “Exit A” starts as a boisterous groove and gradually disintegrates into structured noise, much as Ruder’s “Should You Be Dancing?” starts with an unrelenting six-note unison phrase and gradually breaks down into its component parts. Thee Reps remain more tight (more 70’s Germany or 90’s Chicago) and less jammy in their take on repetition, though on Cryptocartography, they leave room for improvisation – e.g. McCurdy’s gorgeous drumming on “3 AM”, Tanning’s graceful violin on “Risque de Choc”, and Ruder’s synthesizer soundscapes of “Mr Telephone Thrower”. This music has plenty of motoric moments where melodic lines twirl like mobiles, and form and structure are key points of exploration in these tracks. Some tracks work with a more straightforward song structure (e.g. “Espadrilles”), some contain unfolding suites (“Life Mask”), others explore rhythmic and harmonic variation over the course of one track in exhaustive ways (“Heavy Guessing”).



Tracklist:
1-1 Thee Reps - Mr. Telephone Thrower [4:33]
1-2 Thee Reps - Espadrilles [6:05]
1-3 Thee Reps - Risque du Choc [4:44]
1-4 Thee Reps - 3AM [5:57]
1-5 Thee Reps - Life Mask [7:22]
1-6 Thee Reps - Exit A [5:06]
1-7 Thee Reps - Heavy Guessing [5:35]
1-8 Thee Reps - Fluency [5:58]
1-9 Thee Reps - Should You Be Dancing? [6:31]