Gum Takes Tooth

Is it a rule of music that serenity must at some point be destroyed? If it is, the two noise-boffs of Gum Takes Tooth certainly play by it. Any prolonged sections of calm on their supreme, sensitive second LP, Mirrors Fold, have a corresponding Dresden of aural terror to erode the finer nuances of your hearing ability. The opening of the album, its title track, whirrs with a meditative, oscillating chant, the very model of that serenity. At around the two-minute mark, after the serenity has convinced you that no disruptions will be forthcoming, the balance of the universe is redressed with controls of the fart-synth set for the heart of the sun. It's this equality that defines Gum Takes Tooth. Rules are there to be broken, yes, but playing by them can produce objects of extreme, intricate beauty.

The balance of assaulting and rubbing one's tummy aside, Gum Takes Tooth's approach is one of fairness - it just so happens that it's fairness within the context of two maniacs communing in a completely intuitive symmetry. In that early portion of the album, they measure their enthusiasm wonderfully, deploying it at the moment of maximum impact. So, after that first nine-minute odyssey through the pricklier end of noise, the likes of 'White Fear' and 'This Perfect Surface' evince a more thoughtful, even approach, and we are encouraged to consider rhythmic patterns as they fly past. On the latter, particularly, heavenly female vocals intercut with electronics that sound as if they've been squeezed painfully through a sieve like a top-notch tomato passata.

It's not until 'Bone Weapon' that we properly rejoin a world of horrid, satisfying noise and, interestingly, riffs. Something resembling a sped-up Dylan Carlson folk smudge totters into life, but the percussion of Thomas Fuglesang ingeniously disrupts it whenever possible, establishing what one might wankishly call an anti-groove. Invention, pacing and the guts to disrupt a riff so brilliantly distils exactly why Gum Takes Tooth are so loveable - they've an impish compulsion to muck around with their creations but, crucially, not enough to make them unrecognisable. Where their previous album, 2011's Silent Cenotaph, was more cudgel-to-the-temple in its constant abandon, Mirrors Fold is a more tempered affair, which actually makes the moments of shocking violence all the more enjoyable.

Serenity, wherever it lurks on this album, is always given the destruction it deserves. Mirrors Fold is a beautiful bastard, completely ugly on first glance but blessed by immutable charms at its heart. Intricacies and meddlesome moments of technical flamboyance disappear in the din, cog-like ingredients of a supremely well-constructed work. Mirrors Fold relishes its formalism, its dedication to balance and control - and while its wildest moments might seem the product of an almost childish compulsion to throw shit at the walls, you can be sure that there's enough compositional prowess and manhandling on display to separate these two from the noise-rock pack. Superior, effective listening. - The Quietus

We made the first record from this awesomely monikered UK outfit, Silent Cenotaph, our Record Of The Week, way back in 2011, and at the time described them with some band math that looked a little like this: Shit And Shine + Butthole Surfers + Lightning Bolt. The sound was a dizzyingly psychedelic barrage of grinding, rhythmic, electronics doused in druggy tribal freakout, like a super charged This Heat, the drummers kit wired to a mad scientist array of machinery and noise making devices, turning the kit into some giant rhythmic noise machine, and enabling a duo to kick up a din that sounds like it couldn't possibly be made by just two people, and while that first record generally hewed toward a sound that was more chaotic and bombastic, this new one seems to be a bit more melodic and dare we say mellow, there's still plenty of sonic ferocity, and rhythmic bombast for sure, but it sounds more measured, more deftly assembled, maybe less 'punk', but only in the way that bands get better at what they do, and in theory, take what was great about their previous records, and add to it, creating something, even more forward reaching, and ultimately perhaps even better.
Such is the case with Mirrors Fold. We still do LOVE Silent Cenotaph, and it routinely gets play on the iPod even still, but this new one is more subtle, more textural, whereas that first one was the sort of music you wanted to rock out to, jump around and go crazy, this new one, manages to harness that feral energy into something much more focused. The opener begins all swirly and serene, with hushed ambient shimmer, chant-like vocals, be before long the drums explode, adding a churning rhythmic component, without detracting from the melodic component or the vocals, it's not really until a brief bit of hushed shimmer, a barely there ambient interlude, that the song truly launches into crazed sonic chaos, a dizzying blurry flurry of drum madness, a wild octopoidal tangle of tangled jumbled rhythms, that eventually give away to a skeletal bit of rhythmic drift, before one final push, where the drums, the vocals, and swirls of FX are all wound into a dense propulsive tribal spacey noise rock blowout. Phew!
And so it goes, the band laying down mesmerizing hypno-rhythms, while all around strange effects swoop in and out, extra percussion, echoey vox floating above, thick rumbling bass below, sitar like buzz slithers throughout, the sound and arrangement super dynamic, a bit proggy, certainly psychedelic, a sort mutant psych-prog, Afro-space groove. Some moments are like some outer space version of Afro-fuzz Swedes Goat, others sound like a super charged, space rock Necks, a few tracks get downright heavy, and sound like some tripped out psychedelic space outfit, a few tracks sound like a crazy demonic alter ego of This Heat, a few others remind us of the twisted afro-noise of William Bennett's Cut Hands, there are moments of Muslimgauze like Eastern rhythmatism, there are even moments that remind us of Animal Collective at their very weirdest, but really most of this just sounds Gum Takes Tooth, and absolutely nobody else, a totally twisted genius amalgam of all the above mentioned references, deftly shaped into something at once warped and weird, wild and experimental, but also totally hypnotic, and melodic, strangely lovely and in its own way, extremely catchy. A new favorite for sure. And a total shoe-in not just for Record Of The Week, but for our year end best of's too... - Aquarius Records

Striking a pleasing amalgamation between gut-screech noise, acid-bleed walls of gloopy psych and transfixing (almost tribal) rhythmic propulsions is no easy feat but Gum Takes Tooth have created such a potent concoction of these elements on 'Mirrors Fold' that it almost feels coldly scientific. Yet that would of course ignore all the wonderfully human, earthly components that make up this record (although the busted-up spaceship hurtling towards its own death sonics are a constant, juddering blast). The Record's breadth is vast, it has punch and vigor yet it has space and tranquility, and the ground it traverses and hovers over is just as interesting and exploratory. It reels in the occasionally unrelenting, blistering ferocity of the group's live performances for something far more suited to the album format - it's a complete, poised and balanced recording. Any record that can, on occasion, sound like Lightning Bolt locked in a room being forced to collaborate with Amon Duul, with Death Grips on production, is well worth your time. 9/10 - Loud & Quiet Magazine Issue 62