Chinese, The Conquest of Tomorrow Today

Remember when two-piece bands were a novelty and seemed so exciting and new? Now they’re as commonplace as the acts that they pretend to be superior to. Chinese is a two-piece instrumental act from Seattle that’s just released a “noise-rock” adventure about a post-apocalyptic Earth, entitled The Conquest of Tomorrow Today.

First things first: they refer to themselves as “noise-rock,” but there’s nothing noisy abut them. Musically, they’re more of a cross between punk and surf-rock — the guitar maintains the same consistent tone all the way through, very unbefitting of songs that are supposed to elicit actions a la an instrumental. Plus, the arrangements are very lacking, as in “lacking another musician.”

Take “Ajax,” for example — it has a nice, semi-distorted riff going on, but it’s so simple and bland that you’re left waiting for something else to come in to flesh it out. About the only time the band earns their “noise” moniker is where halfway through, there’s this strange buzzing sound. It sounds like when someone has a guitar plugged in with the amp turned on. Just like that. At first, it’s a little curious, but then it moves onto distracting until it becomes downright annoying.

What’s most disappointing, though, is that Chinese showed promise right out of the gate. On “Fingertraps,” they start off with a nice simple riff and then they start to add a little and a little more and start switching tempos. It’s very cool but, unfortunately, very fleeting.