Forget Campfire gently toasting marshmallows and enjoying harmless ghost stories, it’s a Nine:Fifteen CA to VA indie ramble turned ruckus where the drum fog and guitar screech has Time Machine’s Comel_15 really fighting to put his protesting points down and withstand drowning in desperation. Blake9 intentionally ramps up over some faint-hearted chimes, chastened by the karaoke bellows of We Are the World that open proceedings and give the track its tone deaf, bless-him-he’s-trying hook. Leftfield despondents will be heartened by the spectacle of noise.
The drums are more in sync at respectable boom-bap levels on What I Said?, featuring some slithering horns darting in and out, and a bit of a coup in getting Giant Panda’s Newman to lay down a guest verse on a funkily short and sharp stroll. However, 9-15 have got their emotionally open heads on and go searching for more answers on a more muted guitar doodle. Just Above My Head (Halo), is a supremely laidback cut, but after Blake has literally put the track to bed, Comel’s anxious delivery reigns. At times showing worrying tendencies as tainted cherub (“I’ll jump on a grenade and we’ll laugh right after”), he’s intent on stopping those who’ve just headed for the sunlounger in their tracks with his bid to prove he’s worth his angelic glow. A slim shift in focus opens up Nine:Fifteen to a whole new audience: the down in the mouth and heavily backpacked needing a soundtrack for their day to day dragging of feet.
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