Public Dims – Vent Somewhere Else EP

PUBLIC DIMS are a duo hailing from San Juan Capistrano, with a promising debut echoing the freshness and vibrancy from some of the very best bedroom bands around.

This offering could have reached the apogee of lo-fi craftsmanship – I really love vocals that occasionally could mistake themselves for stertorous noises or microphones dropping – vocals which are not readily consumable nor acceptable for normative record label conglomerates and are merely mutterings trapped within the minutia of guitar distortion and symbol thrashing. I really, for example, liked Dalek’s “Gutter Tactics” for the way they immersed vocals in to the music, uncentering the voice musically in the same way Derrida disassembled the phonocentric notion that the spoken word is merely a supplement to the written word. It sounds occasionally like a twangy and less refined  “Badlands” with a vocal which sounds distinctly familiar, like a more annoying Matt Whitehurst, but then I am not sure.

This is a good thing in most respects (I really like both Dirty Beaches and Psychedelic Horseshit) and it certainly shows an artist full of promise. A band who I believe could and will produce fantastic material in the future. The reason everything doesn’t quite gel as desired is because there is a lack of heterogeneity to the material in this collection which presents a monotonicity problem when listening in one sitting.

It could also be because there is a conglomeration of too many ideas cluttering up the final product as suggested by another reviewer. The ending track, for example, “Give In A Little”, posits a visceral early Pink Reason sound-scape which was already poignant throughout the entire record. This offers the listener brooding noise and interesting combinations but these combinations seem to occupy the whole record except the opening track “Numb Shuffle”, offering a rhythm section which percolates twangy reverberation all over the vocal and is probably the highlight of the collection for this reason alone.

It is definitely worth the clicking effort required in downloading this for free and argues the case for massive headphones with puffy earlobes for listening to this without the aid of these implements may result in missing some of the idiosyncrasies in the bass and guitar synchronization. Give this a listen, by clicking below to download the whole album from Bandcamp, or listen to individual tracks right here.

Numb Shuffle –

Suave’s Next Door –

Lorimer –

Written By: Degarmo

My Rating: 7.4/10
Genre/ Tags: Lo-Fi, Post Punk, Noise
Vent Somewhere Else: Tracklist:
1.) Numb Shuffle
2.) Suave’s Next Door
3.) Lorimer
4.) Head Cold Letters
5.) Give in A Little

FREE DOWNLOAD on Bandcamp
Video for Lorimer on YouTube