Nikko

Nikko - ‘Fists’

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The prefix “post” is a fairly dangerous tag in music – it’s fairly hit and miss and not every genre needs to be reconstructed or extended into more avant-garde territory. Increasingly, it seems to me that “post” has come to signal the substitution of proper song-writing with reverb and IDM beats. My reductive view and cynical stance is the result of many years of listening to “post-(insert genre)” music and, as a result, having been over-exposed to the dregs of that musical terrain. Luckily, there are always songs out there like ‘Fists’ that remind you why you liked this stuff in the first place.

Like many other post-rock songs, ‘Fists’ is built around the tension and release of impending instrumental crescendos, but these louder moments aren’t included to offset the pedestrian slower/qiueter moments. Rather, the surging dynamics seems like the logical conclusion to the crawling anxiety of the verses. The fact that Nikko also manage to include a spoken-word sample without it seeming gratuitous or overly pretentious is further credit to their abilities within the genre.

They’ve only a couple of EPs to their name but they seem to pop up on stage every fortnight or so.

www.myspace.com/nikkoband