Originally released digitally on 14th March, and recorded at Hermitage Works during November 2024, the four track EP will receive its first physical release and will be available via Bandcamp.
Mixed and mastered by Max Goulding and Nathan Ridley.
Track Listing
One Window Open
Polar
Unit
Void Request
Liner Notes (by Fred MG):
Bo Gritz have been at it for ten years now. Or do we mean five?
You see, while the trio of Benjamin Salt, Max Goulding and Finn Holland have been together since 2015, they are also one of those groups who have a significant fork in the road in their past, specifically the Coronavirus pandemic. Lockdown gave Bo Gritz the opportunity for a hard-ish reset, with the band using all that time as a chance to work new synthetic textures into the tried and tested combo of guitar/bass/drums/vocals. Coupled with them securing a new permanent practice space in South London, the Covid period ultimately led to the hair-raising noise-rock of Bo Gritz’s most recent LP, 2023’s Chroma.
On Prang, Bo Gritz continue to reap the benefits of their new era. This is a potent four-tracker, industrialised and bristling. From the single-note lurch that heralds first track ‘One Window Open’ to the last thwack of closer ‘Void Request’, Prang’s barely-shackled chaos makes for an unpredictable and arresting listen. It’s ambitious, grizzly and extremely hard not to fall for.
At the noisier end of rock, there’s a strong modern lineage of album openers which get all their mileage from a stomping single-note riff. To a list which includes Pissed Jeans’ ‘Waiting On My Horrible Warning’ and Death Grips’ ‘Giving Bad People Good Ideas’ we can now add ‘One Window Open’. The track sitting just below mid-tempo allows space in the beat with which Bo Gritz can gesture towards all manner of beat-based stylings, from mercurial junglism to broken-beat techno.
The stall set out, Prang’s other three joints also tow the line of order and bedlam. ‘Polar’ is screed with strange, almost-tuneful noise which sounds like a revving motorcycle fed through an ungodly array of outboard gear. Occupying a space between texture and melody, this sort-of-lead line increasingly becomes the centrepiece of the song as things go on. Something similar takes place on ‘Unit’, and this track’s nervous twitching also has one thinking of that instrumental version of ‘Breathe’ by The Prodigy which used to be on the soundtrack of one of the Wipeout games.
As with the instruments, so with the vocals. Across this EP, Holland assimilates a sense of barely-controlled chaos into both the lyrics and delivery. The way in which ‘Polar’ sets lurid imagery (‘they said his eyes were cut out’) against the straight-laced sloganeering of capital (‘business must only get better’) makes one think of Thom Yorke’s star-making era cut with a little of that Gilla Band hysteria. ‘Void Request’ – a joint with a hint of Leeds lifers Bilge Pump in its DNA – finds Holland barking stentorian code one minute, muttering in the background the next.
Times change, but humanity doesn’t. Whether Bo Gritz had been doing their thing for five, ten or fifty years, the feeling at the heart of Prang – the suppressed horror of contemporary civilisation, the ugliness lurking underneath the workaday – is one for the ages. It’s just that now, in Bo Gritz’s new phase, they’ve got the emotional and material tools to deliver their message with a viscerality which feels thrillingly contemporary.
Aural Aggravation 