Sydney, Australia's Castratii excel at creating songs that lend descriptors like “destroyed,” “fractured,” and “doomed” a place in the pop construct. They are following up last year's Eora LP, on LA-based boutique imprint Time No Place, with the Nesting EP.
In listening to “The Crawl”, I cannot shake the urge to describe Castratii as wanting to be at odds with itself. A moniker that suggests a stripping, but “The Crawl” is dense of sound and possessing the baritone of a bull frog. The track operates at a sluggish pace, and then it just doesn't. It's simplistic, only to tear the whole thing apart with a sample wheel of fuzz tones, manipulated blips, and revving nodes. “The Crawl” stews and then, like an unwatched pot, boils over violently, but it's an artful mess.
Castratii's Nesting EP is out November 19 on Time No Place.
