http://www.adequacy.net/2009/02/technostress-technostress-ep/It’s not unusual these days for band members to collaborate across
great physical distances, as members in one city can work on songs with
members in another by exhanging ideas and rough drafts digitally.
Technostress consists of three musicians, two in DC and one in LA, yet the band has managed
to record an EP and tour Japan. If that’s not progress, I don’t know
what is.
Singer/bassist Treiops Treyfid, the LA band member, used to live in
DC back when he was in cult-favorite band Pitchblende. The DC
contingent of Karl Hill and Aimee Soubier played in The Factory
Incident with Government Issue’s John Stabb, so—taken together—the
band’s pedigree lends it some instant credibility. Despite the past
projects of its members, what Technostress delivers is more alienated
80s-rooted post-punk than art-rock or hardcore.
You can’t mistake the Treyfid vocal style for anyone else’s: it’s
detached and distinctive. In Technostress it’s a little creepy, and on
“Devices Crawl,” sounds appropriately anxious and paranoid. This track
has sharp, slightly discordant guitar (as on most other cuts as well)
that fuels the song’s sense of crisis. “Electrocution” slithers through
its verses with a serpentine guitar line and near-dance beat,
punctuated by occasional high bass notes. The song perpetuates the EP’s
dystopian vision of our future as if the motif weren’t already clear
enough from the band’s name and song titles alone.
“Strip Mall” and “Are You Human?” coalesce around drum racket and
more sharp guitar. “All Is Styled” takes a little Gang of Four or Pylon
(in terms of its rhythm section) and tacks on some Fall/early Bloc
Party to give it a novel feel. Overall, the EP gives us a glimpse into
our future, or one vision of what our future may be. In the
Technostress world, it’s not always a pretty place but it is some
comfort to have it laid out like this before we get there.