Ikara Colt

Basic Instructions (2003)

jonathan

It's hard for me to even write this after seeing how many people are touting Ikara Colt as some revolutionary breed of "art-punk," in yet another meaningless sub-categorical classification.

Let me make this easy. As much as I don't like resorting to "this band sounds like (xxx)," I can't really figure out any other way to convey this message. Ikara Colt is a poor-man's Sonic Youth–more electronic but far, far, far less musically interesting.

Epitaph seems to be jumping on this trend of the next breakthrough sound in this (hardly) new era of rock–they got lucky with The Hives–a probable soon to be one-hit-wonder.

Ikara's Basic Instructions EP sounds exactly like their first full length, Chat and Business. There's some okay electronic beats, but overall, this band has nothing on Sonic Youth. Listen to "May B 1 Day" or "Panic", hell any of the five tracks–the source is blatant, embarrassingly so.

There's really no more needed to describe Ikara Colt. I could go into aurally explaining what's going on–but your time would be better spent listening to Daydream Nation.

As a Sonic Youth fan, I wasn't impressed by anything Ikara Colt had to offer on this EP (nor was I impressed by their full length). This is nothing revolutionary. This is nothing new. This art punk thing was nailed by Sonic Youth in the post-punk 80s. I'm just really tired of hearing this buzz, this faux revolutionary hype only to hear a sub par version of a once (or in this case, still) revolutionary band. Is music really this stagnant right now? This is regression, not progression.