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I Can I Can't - I Can I Can't

Low Company

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Fresh in the post from our friends at Low Company -

Collected recordings from sub-underground Tottenham DIY outfit I Can I Can’t.

One of those bitter-sweet moments when you find an amazing new album by a wicked new band, only to find out they’ve already packed it in. Still, even back in ‘09, they must have felt like a group out of time. ‘Meet Thy Manufacturer’ could be Sebadoh recording at Cold Storage, if it didn’t sound so damn much like Mike Rep & The Rotas ‘85 dork-paean ‘H.M. Has Destroyed My Mind’. Except it’s none of these, it’s an awkward skwad of reprobates in a Tottenham warehouse recording their earnest cries roughly a decade back.

‘(Let’s) Work Backwards’ clatters into view with utter wild-eyed desperation, before resigning back into organ-ic murk. A rudimentary 4x4 pots’n’pans beat drifts back into focus. Pure negi-vibing anti-anthemic post-punk urgency. ‘Locksmith’ sounds like a no-fi take on brothers’ Woo beige-bedroom escapism. ‘Snowglobe’ is spiky, Mockasin/Pink-ish downtown cartoon-funk mutating into campfire punk minimalism. ‘Ah Ran Be’ is an unexpected side-stepper, coming across like a Levi/Blunt joint backed by Sunburned Hand of the Man. ‘Hobbyist’ is a serene moment of early-morning clarity; dial-up tone, crackle & static, Clicks’n’Cuts style glitches dancing with cosmic rays, a binary pulse beginning to form. A luscious lick rolls in, recalling the most idyllic moments of Harmonia & Cluster. Then before too long, motherfucking ‘Here Comes The Warm Jets’-style outro drops in and cuddles you to death, genuinely epic.

Closer ‘Plume’ is most confounding of all, sharing almost nothing with the rest of the record. Even the fidelity feels markedly different; fully-rounded 808 kicks punch through what appears to be a Peter Gordon-penned eulogy for an East Asian dignitary. Just what the doctor ordered!!!

RIYL London art-punk outsiders The Work, Metabolist, This Heat, Unrest, Work & Play,
R. Stevie Moore, Ariel Pink,

Edition of 250 copies, with printed insert and download code included.


TRACKLIST:
1. "Meet Thy Manufacturer" (1:53)
2. "(Let's) Work Backwards" (4:58)
3. "Locksmith" (2:06)
4. "Snowglobe" (3:39)
5. "Favours In" (3:47)
6. "Ah Ran Bee" (4:43)
Side 2
1. "Hobbyist" (4:52)
2. "Plume" (1:59)



(Let's) Work Backwards



Locksmith



Plume



Favours In