There are records music critics absolutely adore and records that they totally hate.
A Proposed Method for Determining Sanding Fitness is somehow both of them. What do we mean? Well, all too often, the cultural gate-keepers in contemporary America sample the tried and true and attack it for a lack of adventurousness or derring-do, calling it safe and staid in the opuses they write. But what happens when they are presented with something truly weird, something BEYOND adventurousness?
Enter Stella Research Committee, a Cincinnati/Columbus, all-Ohio trio releasing their fifth LP on 12 March. The group bill themselves as purveyors of strange sounds sitting at the intersection of noise-rock and no wave but, of course, it’s all a little bit more complicated than that. The band’s sound is frequently more NOISE than ROCK – no AmRep or Touch and Go deals here – despite the somewhat conventional three-piece line-up. And, yes, the no-wave trappings, that notion of anti-art and urban