The Infinite Three

The Infinite Three's music is a bit like scrubbing yourself down with a wire brush. It's all scrape and pinprick, uncomfortable and yet strangely exhilarating at the same time (that could be just me, mind). Nine slices of impeccable and implacable avant-rock here: tight, densely-packed rhythms, guitar, bass and drums acting in such unison it's almost as if they've been choreographed.

'Mother Iron' is one big pell-mell pulse, nimble bassline didging the guitar riffs as they rain down. 'His Body' is a heavy heavy riff-monster, thundering and churning like Sonic Youth and Killing Joke fighting in a sack. 'Sharpy' is a mutant surf-punk workout, the bass growling like a bad mood, guitarist Dan Knowler delivering an offhand, no-fuss vocal - throughout the album he's the detached observer, laconic and deadpan, the antithesis of the standard rock vocalist. But, in the context of The Infinite Three's sturm and drang, where the usual histrionics would be out of place, he fits.

There are instrumentals, too - the infernal machinery of 'Light (Vertigo #2)', punctuated by flurries of drums, as if someone keeps throwing the kit downstairs, and the closing 'False Locust / Locust Police', which wraps things up with a bit of jazzy ambience. And if the words 'jazzy ambience' normally send you running for the hills - wait. Just when you thought it was all going to end respectably, the Locust Police break down the door with a sonic battering ram that makes My Bloody Valentine's 'Holocaust' sound like the twittering of little birds. Avant rock it is, but with plenty of weight behind it - and everything on eleven. - Nemesis To Go

Marc Almond fronting Soundtracks-era Swans, with Blixa Bargeld backwards-masking Horse Rotorvator on an old gramophone. Not a sentence I ever thought I'd find myself writing, but nor is it an untrue one, at least on this EP's stand-out track 'Blooms Of Immediacy'. And then they go all cinematically Scornish on us, as if Ulver were really from some East London skin-pit, with Nick Cave running the projector room and skeletal drummer-boys in the aisles. You could not, frankly, be more in tune with my tastes if you tried. Whether anyone else agrees is, frankly, none of my concern. 5.5 out of 5. - Zero Tolerance Magazine

Leisur Hive were a band highly thought of around these Organic parts, and now two elements of that band are back in the brooding shape of THE INFINITE THREE to push further down some of those dark paths…

The Infinite Three is the new musical project of R.Allen (Halo / Un / Leisur Hive) and D.Knowler (Leisur Hive / Sweetie / Cindytalk). Merging noise, improv, found sound, dub, metal, electronic music and anything else we feel like, The InfinIte Three aims to take up where Leisur Hive left off and to explore paths our previous band were never able to tread….

Drummer Robert Allen and guitarist Daniel Knowler are back for more, after wrapping up activities with their previous band. The criminally under-appreciated London outfit Leisur Hive deserved far more acclaim for their dark, edgy music; they were one of the best kept secrets out there in terms of really creative challenging music that came with a brave bit of original sounding difference.

This new album from The Infinite Three is a nice progression, actually: not quite Leisur Hive part two, more experimental for a start, but they have used that “greyed-out art rock” as some kind of blueprint to build on here with this fine album and these atmospheric tracks. Impressive sound, actually, rather different, instantly demanding, brooding, dark - dark songs, very much songs that built around clever bleak psychedelic drones, brooding dark colours, broken teeth on the crust of utopia…. They say some of it is improvised, it clearly is, but always in a structured, under-control way - these songs sound like very thought out creations, their improvising has been tamed and shaped, locked into the framework of songs, meshed as part of a dark structure with the blood and soil (or was it toil?) of it all – some songs getting to the brooding point, others atmospheric progressions. There’s a tension, a menace that’s there all the way to the very core - the sun-rayed dog, the blacker side of Killing Joke, the brooding side, all inflamed. Pieces constructed from live improvisation taken back to the studio for be formed towards something structured - clever constructions then, focused pieces of something rather unique, very much songs, atmospheric pieces. Laced with atmosphere, with electric tension, with brooding quietness, with a menace – the vocals have a touch of the Peter Hammill about them, maybe a darker shade of Marc Almond - swarming songs, collecting visions, sampling the city, crashing on shores of black sand… A vague hint of a dark dub line or two.

This is rather different, this is rewarding, almost industrial at times, in that unclichéd Throbbing Gristle, Coil, Slab manner of industrialism, not all clanking machine, something far more subtle, something alive with far more thought. Lot of dark colour here, shimmering details, more to find every time, bits under the surface, real artistic creation, a rich musical wilderness underground on the crest of utopia. Restrained power, brooding… Excellent. - Organ