The title gives the game away: Seims is a math synth rock band, indeed Australia’s premier math synth rock band we’re told. Does anyone out there know of any others? I can’t say that I do. Well, “3” is their (wait for it) third album, and “3.1” is a bit more. As far as I can make out not only numbers but colours seem to be important to them.
And so we start with “Cyan”. I remember they used to use cyan as something to do with finetuning the colours on the old BBC test card. Such useless knowledge apart, after a beginning of what I can only describe as jazz-noise, it goes into an instrumental piece of test card music (music for light drama if you’re a bit younger and don’t know what the hell I’m on about). It then goes all avant-garde and mariachi, and a bit metally. Now why it should then become all quiet and reflective I am at a loss to explain. But it is very calming. So next in the sequence is “Magenta”. Our synth wave is dreamy. Stars drift through the sky. The pace picks up, but in spite of the rush of blood which develops, I struggled to find excitement. “Yellow” is worth just short of twelve and a half minutes. After a pretty monotonous and undistinctive straight journey, it all falls to pieces at around the 6 minute mark and becomes momentarily more interesting. The drums strike obliquely as the world drifts around uncontrollably in outer space. A bit more interesting then. Clearly Seims decided that this needed a drunken chorus so we get that. It seems to die off without explanation but it can’t end without lapping water and the sound of a spacecraft entering a woozy world. There are no clues what world this might be. “Imperfect Black” would be ok without the vocals. The instrumentals are smooth and smoochy, and if the vocals were supposed to add meaning and soul but they don’t. They’re just awful. Its counterpart “Absolute Black” drifts off into the cosmic abstract, succeeding in making distorted experimentalism sound bland. It’s strange as it’s strong and features a range of instruments but it just came across to me as a kind of disorientated big band sound playing the theme to a B list drama. “Translucence” seems to have a bit of a Gaelic influence in the style but it all just stumbles along as discordantly as ever, with obscure symphonic elements to make it more fog-like. “Clarity” has the rare quality of, well, clarity as it starts off with an insistent guitar rhythm, but the discordant symphony soon enough muscles its way in. It means a nice bit of energy to finish, but it’s hardly blow-your-mind stuff even so.
I guess they didn’t make this all up as they went along as it’s too complex for that, but it just seems like it. I guess we don’t need the reason for everything, but I like things to be interesting and broadly have some sort of structure or point, even if it’s an abstract one. This album or pair of eps or whatever will divide opinion. I suspect that some may see “3 + 3.1” as the answer to the universe where others like me will rue the waste of 46 or so minutes listening to this unfathomable and yet unimaginably bland work. I cannot understand how something purportedly experimental could be so uninteresting. If it broadened my mind, I’m not feeling it. My reaction to each of “3” and “3.1” is the same. I honestly got no enjoyment or satisfaction from listening to this.
(2/10 Andrew Doherty)
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