PREE TONE - Brekka
Two years after their last longplayer, Ukrainian noise rock trio is back with Brekka, which with five songs should rather be considered a long EP than a short longplayer. I remember really liking Kiddy, which sounded like a love letter to the noise rock of the late Eighties and early Nineties, and as expected, things haven’t changed that much with the band.
What you’ll notice first is that the songs are a little shorter than in the past when they sometimes made it to twenty minutes, or between seven and eight minutes on the last album. This time they are "only" between four and seven minutes long, so still more generous than your typical rock song.
The opener and first single Fifth O is a good indication at what you’ll hear on Brekka. The main ingredient is still gnarly noise rock, but there are also elements of shoegaze, post punk and even psychedelic elements. The vocals somehow remind me of the late Mark E. Smith, although delivered in a more discreet way. As Pree Tone consist only of three musicians, they use a lot of effects and distortion, often a heavy dose of reverb on the guitar, while the rhythm section is laying down a foundation like a duo of busy bees. All of this is melodic, but comes with a healthy amount of angular moments that prevent you from considering Pree Tone as just another run-of-the-mill noise rock band. On the concluding Flow, a seven-minute-long psychedelic journey, the band reminds me of Spacemen 3 jamming with The Jesus And Mary Chain, proving that they are just at home in a trippier setting.
Although Pree Tone are from Ukraine, their music doesn’t really have an Eastern European vibe. While Kiddy had a strong American touch, Brekka has a decidedly British influences, hailing back from a time when music sounded more hand-made than a lot what we get to listen to today. The unpolished production manages to give enough room to every instrument, and the vocals, shared between the guitarist and bassist, also find a niche where they belong. Maybe their last album was more instantly mindblowing, but Brekka is definitely a grower, showing that Pree Tone have comfortably settled in a noise rock sound, enriched with a sufficient number of other indie genres, that they come up with something maybe not entirely original, but undoubtedly thoroughly pleasant that should appeal to fans of the British underground from about thirty years ago.