Couch

Between the ebb and flow of organic instrumentals and sporadic twinkling of programmed beats and synths, Munich's Couch dissembles the commonly intolerable crescendoing moments of postrock. Figur 5's opener (but surely a set closer), "Gegen Alles Bereit," roars with multitracked guitar and packs its dense melancholia among hammered single-note-driven licks...

By Dominic Umile

June 1, 2006

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Between the ebb and flow of organic instrumentals and sporadic twinkling of programmed beats and synths, Munich's Couch dissembles the commonly intolerable crescendoing moments of postrock. Figur 5's opener (but surely a set closer), "Gegen Alles Bereit," roars with multitracked guitar and packs its dense melancholia among hammered single-note-driven licks and an onslaught of crash cymbals. Though this song suggests that the band's fifth long-player is centered on huge, live-set-friendly theatrics, there's a breaking point when mildly treated breezes of stuttering guitar are swapped for a big cock-rock finish. Such reserve calls to Figur 5's familial relationship to another recent Morr release, B. Fleischmann's The Humbucking Coil. Distant keyboard murmurs, echoing laptop beats, and agreeable octave chords fuse on entries like "Blinde Zeichen" and "Position: Wieder Eins," as they did on Coil earlier this year. Figur 5's electronically woven subtlety is but a minor layer of "Position," and for the most part, the tune is pinned against the album's dominant, unbridled (post)rock after a minute or so, while Couch triumphs in its dodge of a silly blanket subgenre name.

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