These New Puritans
Beat Pyramid
Domino Records

“Number One is the individual / Number 2 duality / Number 3 numerology is all shit / Number 4 is a number that will run through this music.” This is how the lyrical element to Beat Pyramid begins. References to numerics, mnemonics, infinity, history, synchronicity, repetition, patterns and mathematics form brief crystals of cryptic significance that shatter, multiplying tenfold. The music starts with the second half of a track concluding with the beginning at the end of the album. Not chaos, not even random. Elegant form designed to loop, repeat, and loop and repeat. Beat Pyramid is an edict full of harsh spidery guitars crawling all over its surface, rubbery reflexive beats thumping along its’ length, and across it all a skeletal vertebrae of sharp snares and hi-hats jutting through the mix, creating continually unfolding fractal patterns from the repetitious themes uncoiling out of the speakers. Some smoother tracks stay closer to the ground like the ominously paced Numerology with its softly shimmering guitars slipping out between spaces vacated in the wake of drums, or Doppelganger’s duel disorienting effect of low hum and swirling synth kaleidoscope – these tracks contrast with the more dynamic dance-floor oriented propulsive riot engines; the Eastern slashing Swords of Truth and teeth-rattlingly kinetic Elvis. Peaks in linearity within an album, peaks within linearity in song. Contract, relax, tense and release. Energies dissipated, pooled and unleashed. This is how Beat Pyramid continues long after the sound has left the stereo