dd/mm/yyyy – Black Square

My Rating: 9/10
Genre/ Tags: Post Punk, Experimental, Canadian

dd/mm/yyyy may or may not be a band you have already familiarized yourself with. If you already have discovered them up to this point, then good job. If not, well then I suggest you stick around and read this post, and then perhaps you’ll be interested enough to check out the band.

Most importantly about the band, their name is pronounced “day month year”. Their first release came out back in 2004, but the members of the band had been practicing together for a year already, beginning the band 2003. dd/mm/yyyy hail from the second biggest continent in the world, Canada, coming specifically out of the largest city in Canada, Toronto. Currently, the band has 5 members, and they are all currently on tour in the UK before they come over to the US for the SXSW shows that are happening in the Texas area.

Depending on who you talk to, you could say that dd/mm/yyyy’s most recent release is their most defined to date, but with the way the band is constantly changing things up, it’s difficult to pin down an accurate statement. Once you have an idea, their music is changing so fast that you’re not too sure if you want to speak it aloud anymore. Some things that can easily and most definitely be said about the band is that the music is usually fast, with frantic guitar licks and urgent vocals – possibly even arguably mysterious or creepy at times with a song like “They” or “My Glasses”. Other songs like the first track “Bronzage” and the final track “Digital Haircut” feature these more rabid and spazzed out guitar licks mentioned above. This really goes to show how the band can go directly from one sound to the next, and this is definitely not something every band is known for doing. Other tracks from the album such as “No Life”, “Birdtown”, and “I’m Still in the Walls” are more or less dominated by the electronic keyboards that sound like they come right from an old school Nintendo or Sega Genesis. Other tracks like “Lismer”, “$50,000 Guitar Gear”, and “Sirius B” might as well leave you saying (or thinking) “Wow”. If you disagree with anything I just said, one thing that I hope we could agree on is that this band surely has it’s own unique sound. Before listening to dd/mm/yyyy, I had never heard music quite like this. The most accurate and short description I came across about the band was found on their Wikipedia page, and it reads “The nature of dd/mm/yyyy’s music is explained as a mess of spastic, specially challenged art rock with jagged, diamondback guitars, ’80s video game synthesizers, and drums that roll with all the punches of the discordant dreamy vocals”. Yeah. Enjoy.

Tracklist: Black Square
1. Bronzage
2. No Life
3. They
4. Infinity Skull Cube
5. My Glasses
6. Birdtown
7. Sirius B
8. lismer
9. Real Eyes
10. $50,000 Guitar Gear
11. I’m Still In The Walls
12. Digital Haircut

dd/mm/yyyy – Official Website
dd/mm/yyyy on the MyyySpaaace
Black Square/ all dd/mm/yyyy releases – BUY!!!