dd/mm/yyyy

Black Square (2009)

lifetime_

A wise man once described redundant, nonsensical and altogether unnecessary information by bringing together the words "shitty" and "info," thereby birthing the term "shinfo." Toronto's dd/mm/yyyy (articulated "day-month-year") have in effect created the sonic equivalent to shinfo by stringing together 12 obnoxious combinations of shinfonious noise that don't seem to elude to anything and dubbing it Black Square.

In terms of sound, dd/mm/yyyy are all over the place, generally adhering to a spastic and angular form of post-punk, but also incorporating grainy synthesizers and other miscellaneous electronics into their songs. Technically speaking, dd/mm/yyyy is really tight, demonstrating that they're very capable players. Their songs are often technically demanding but the band seems to plow through them with relative ease (see album opener "Bronzage" and the relentless "Sirius B").

My real problem with this album is that while it has moments where the band shines and is hammering out bits of intriguing and technically impressive music, the majority of the time the songs fall flat after a high point that usually happens far too early. Most everything just seems to trail off into nothingness, rendering the initially interesting bits irritating by each song's end and leaving me unfulfilled and bored by the time the album is drawn to a close. It's a really unfortunate method for this album, because as I mentioned before, there are several points over the album that do in fact kick ass and have the potential to be a lot of fun.

Despite the majority of Black Square bottoming out, there are a couple of songs that grab my attention and get my head bobbing, namely the aforementioned "Bronzage" and "Sirius B," as well as the driving "Real Eyes." All in all there are some cool ideas on the album that, not considering context, are pulled off very well. At the end of the day, however, there are much better ways to spend 35 minutes.