My Disco’s Sustained Inferno

Someone was using their entire brain when they came up with the brilliant goddamn idea to stick Australia’s My Disco on a Melbourne (My Disco’s hometown) date with Wire in early January. Wire has always been at their best when they are at their brittle, barren least and My Disco is, if anything, a study in the minimalistic ethic.

Little Joy is the band’s third proper elpee, a recording as bedizened as a lunar landscape. The drum patterns are primal, yet intricate and incessant. Liam Andrews pairs his voice to his instrument, rarely speaking/chanting in departure from his murmuring basslines. Andrews and drummer Rohan Rebeiro ratchet up their rhythm to the breaking point, and that’s usually where Liam’s brother Benjamin shatters it all and unleashes a torrent of white-hot sustain.

The end result is music that is somehow simultaneously relaxing AND agitating. Great stuff to listen to while crushing a parking lot full of Volvos with a dump truck — if you time the points of impact just right.