EP Review: It’s Warm Now

The Treasury had exactly the genre of sound I expected from the bio, but with a presence and rich darkness to the tone that
I wasn’t anticipating.
Not dark like the musings of a goth rock icon destined to die at 23 but dark like a sexy old vampire. The deep, synth bass tones penetrate from sternum to groin and the withered, rusty steel guitar wails like ghosts in a far off room down the hall of a condemned building.

Medieval sounds creep out from the shadows under the post punk staircase; from flutes and what sounds like a synthesized dulcimer in The Blood Lives to the choral pads in Breathe. The tracks have an intrusively cinematic quality.

Night High reeks of 80’s alleyway smoke machines and would feel at home at the end of a Clive Barker movie, leaving you suddenly alone in a cloud of steam. Hold Me has such a suspenseful grip on the space between sounds that even the drums sound eerie and stretched.

The percussion is varied and includes some great live sounding fill moments like in the earlier parts of Breathe and Tell Me it’s Alright, as well as some tinny midi programmed sounding beats firing rapidly in perfectly quantized rhythm on The Blood Lives.

Final track Tell Me it’s Alright has the most eclectic collection of beats, both in terms of instrumentation and composition. It incorporates dance grooves that weren’t even hinted at on the tracks before it, using cowbells, electronic snares and modulations in ever-so-slightly off kilter rhythms, like Madonna with a limp. They never sit still for long and dart around the grid playfully.

It’s Warm Now is a precise clattering of blood stained synth and tetanus inducing shards of guitar. It’s a spacious and affecting piece that has a physiological impact and a strong aesthetic. To paint a picture for you with film references it’s like scoring The Lost Boys or Nightbreed with Phil Collins and New Order fronted by Bauhaus’ Peter Murphy.

It’s a time capsule of classic 80’s post punk articulated through the creative mind of somebody who’s had time to really percolate on what made that sound so great. The Treasury‘s modern love letter to the genre makes me want to tumble backwards through a rabbit hole of old records.