December 12th, 2001: The Minnow, Alameda,CA

From BlackYellowBlack

"...We headed on over to Alameda to check out one of the Beastfest shows at The Minnow. The venue is a complete dive, but marginally better than The Portlite nearby in Oakland. After a bit of hesitation about whether we should go in or not, we decided to watch Replicator play their set. Holy smokin' Jesus were they good. Definitely in that Shellac/Fugazi style, but very well done, fully rockin', and completely entertaining. Conan Neutron armed with his wireless guitar went full-on Oxes style and ran around the room, proceeded to climb up onto the bar only to be cussed at and chased off by the suburban idiot bartender. Completely awesome."

by Cory

May 30th, 2001: Bottom of the Hill, SF,CA

From Playing in Fog

"Ahh, Replicator. This show made us nervous like no other, primarily because we had heard so much about them from their lead singer, Conan Neutron. You see, Conan seemed like a perfectly nice guy, but... we've met really nice people in bad bands. So you can imagine our relief when we walked into the BOTH and found out...ladies and gentlemen, empirically speaking, Replicator do NOT suck! In fact, they were quite loud and rockin'. Of course, we would expect no less from a guy who likes Shellac and Drive Like Jehu (yea!), but it's nice to get solid confirmation on the kickass tendencies of any given band. We additionally discovered that Replicator weren't just generous with noise and broken guitar strings: they were also in the business of handing out clothing. A huge heap of them, right in of bassist Ben Adrian to be exact, thus forging a sort of indie rock missionary movement right in front of our eyes. But let us not talk of religion, let us speak of the fact th at their new cd, Winterval, was engineered by Bob Weston, who also worked with...anyone? POLVO! Exactly. It should also be noted that Replicator is a band for people with problems. How do we know this? Because there is a special section on their website called "Ask Dr. Ben" where you can write in with your 'issues' and have them solved by, well, Ben. It's a perfect one-stop-shopping opportunity for your everyday detached, depressed indierocker. What's not to like?"

With Lower Forty-Eight and From Monument to Masses

by Squid

East Bay Express

Artist: Replicator

Disc: You Are Under Surveillance

Insufficient Description of Sound: Abrasive poli-punk screeds featuring shrieking guitars, Temple of Doom bass riffs, maniacal shouting, and random Yngwie Malmsteen samples (You've unleashed the fookin' fury!). Unnerving, cathartic, occasionally tedious, frequently pretty funny.

Unifying Lyrical Statement: This aggression will not stand, MAN -- an excellent Big Lebowski reference.

Sex Appeal? "The themes on the album deal with paranoia, lost freedom of choice, airborne revenge, the end of the world, the problems and consequences of an overgrown consumerist, bottom line-oriented culture; and the merits of applied righteous indignation," notes Replicator's press release. "There are absolutely no songs about relationships or love." Right.

Idealized Listening Environment: Guantanamo Bay.

Bonus Fact: Dig the Gauntlet reference ("Warrior Needs Food, Badly") and the lovely piano figure that wraps up "The Weight of 3 Marlon Brandos."

Further Info: Playing Oakland's Mile High Club Saturday, September 11. $7, 9 p.m. 510-654-4549 or OaklandMile High.com

Mesh Magazine

There was a time in the mid to late nineties when the underground rock community was free from Vice Mag fashionista posturing and deliberate genre aping. Replicator recalls those times. No white belts or shotgun bed head here, only loud chaotic rock reminiscent of Six Finger Satellite, Chrome and Bastro. Hide your disco balls, coke mirrors and Club I.D. fliers, because you'll be hearing a lot more from Replicator and they are most definitely a DO!

Lowcut Magazine

This band comes from Oakland, California. They are a high energy 3 piece that plays intense, smart, Nomeansno inspired bass driven rock with intelligent lyrics-no love songs! The band mix in the occasional sample or bizarre synthesizer sound when it feels appropriate! They are sometimes angry but when you read the liner notes, you know they are quite cool. This sounds great when cranked up. This is the bands first full length CD. They had a previous lp called Winterval.

Splendid e-zine

Blisteringly loud, politically engaged, full of stops and starts and broken by bizarre samples, Replicator's second full-length delivers on the promise of 2002's untitled EP, while adding new textures to the band's mathy, driven anxiety. Each member of the SF-based trio brings his own brand of insanity to Replicator -- Conan Neutron is behind the frenzied political rants and stabbing guitar, Ben Adrian's thundering bass drives every track into the wall and beyond, and Chris Bolig's drums hold the whole thing together -- except when he, too, explodes.

Replicator have become, if anything, more political than ever in the two years since their last record. Before, the issues were economic and social -- the collapse of the dotcom economy, unemployment, estrangement from the system -- and you can hear a bit of that on "Epoch" (the EP's best track, which is also included on You Are Under Surveillance). On the newer songs, however, the targets are more specific. "Get mad, get mad, get mad, you son of a bitches," says the sample that introduces "The Frogurt Is Cursed", opening fire on the Bush administration, the war, the restrictions on civil liberties, the religious right and any other target that happens to raise its head. "You've released the fuckin' fury," a voice with a city accent observes, against a head-banging assault of guitar, bass and drums, and given the rest of the album, it's hard to argue. Later on, there are samples of President Bush's voice mixed before and under "It Seems Like The Real Deal, But The Citizenship Doesn't Hurt", spouting his usual self-justifying pieties on terrorism, but Dubya gets buried under the traded shouts of "Go back / We'll take you to camp x-ray," which may refer to Guantanamo. It could all too easily go over the top, but there's a goofiness here that undercuts the commentary. How seriously can you take a band that names one track after a frozen dessert and another ("Warrior Needs Food, Badly") after a line from a video game?

The production here is clear enough that you can hear every element all the time, interacting, underlining, egging the others on to new levels of intensity. Moreover, there's sudden, startling space built into the wall of noise, instances of silence that are as physical a presence as the cacophony that follows them. The Sabbathy interplay of bass and drums in "Mutually Assured Repulsion"'s intro is great, not just because of how Adrian and Bolig fill the spaces around each other's notes, but because of the stops that have you leaning in for whatever's next. The song thickens to a metal-tinged crescendo, stomping on the on-beats with guitar and bass and drums, then backs off again to a stripped bassline and vocals. An increasingly frenetic chorus of "We're ready / Our wills are honed" is a march turning into a riot, a fractured firestorm that ends so suddenly you gasp.

The biggest step forward comes near the end, with "The Weight Of 3 Marlon Brandos", a tightly coiled meditation on integrity. It is more restrained than anything else on the album, with guitar lines that feel almost lyrical, yet pushed forward by the same intensity as harder-rocking cuts like "The Frogurt" and "Alert Status: 0". It's like a loud song being pushed through a thin straw, concentrated and made relevant by its constraints. The song ends with a really beautiful piano solo from Ben Adrian, which somehow transforms the tune's initial anger into sadness.

This is smart, angry music, played as hard as possible by people who are mad as hell but also prone to the occasional fit of giggles. If that sounds like your cup of tea, you could hardly do better than You Are Under Surveillance.

West Coast Performer

A popular entertainer recently said (more or less) that while the bombs are falling and people are dying around the world, "everybody in the club gettin tipsy." The opportunity for musicians and entertainers to comment on current events is ripe, and most have decided to simply entertain instead of enlighten. One of the exceptions to this unfortunate phenomenon is Replicator, an Oakland trio whose modus operandi is to wake people up, open their eyes, and realize the times have already changed. Unsurprising given the band's heavy involvement in its local Bands Against Bush chapter, the album opens with a sample: "Get mad, you sons of bitches, get mad." From there, Replicator launches into a fierce angular sonic attack, relentlessly pounding machine-gun rhythms into the listeners head while shouting "Sit down, Shut up," which in this case seems to be more of an observational musing on the apathy of fellow Americans than a command. The most easily accessible reference points for the brand of rock brewed by Replicator may be Fugazi meets Rage Against the Machine. It's there in the staccato vocal delivery, and the stop-start math-rock beats. The running theme of You Are Under Surveillance is the complacency of the American public while the government takes away more and more freedom in the interest of National Security. Song titles like "It Seems Like the Real Deal, But Citizenship Doesn't Hurt" and "Alert Status: 0" help reinforce this sentiment. A sample of George W. assuring us that " The Government's taking unprecedented measures to protect our homeland" doesn't hurt. The lyrical content itself is just more ammo with which Replicator can shoot: "The stock price is rising / the bottom line has been cut / |how can you sleep?" Replicator seeks to awaken and enliven the listeners, and do a damn good job of combining more traditional post-punk elements with somewhat experimental sound-collage. The result is an invigorating wake-up for a country a littl e too focused on finding out "where the party at." (Substandard Records)

Kitty Magik

f there's one thing I really dislike on albums, it's not including lyrics in the booklet. If there's another thing that really bugs me on albums, it's poor use of movie sound bites and by that I mean they're used such that you have a hard time telling what they're saying. Thankfully, Replicator is able to overcome these two major handicaps by 1) having a slick, solid layout of their album (making it look like a file that's been kept on the band) and 2) using a Simpsons reference as one of their song titles ("The frogurt is cursed"). Oh yeah, and the music ain't too shabby either. Although they're surely sick of the comparison by now, the undeniable reference to Shellac, A Minor Forest (especially on "Mutually Assured Repulsion") and other such math-rock acts is essential in pinning down the Replicator sound. However, where most of those bands tend to have vocals that hide underneath their music, singer Conan Neutron's lungs belt out tones that seem to contrast the music both interestingly and sharply. While only eight songs long, the album comes in at 43 minutes. Unfortunately, it's not until the second half of the album that the band starts to take off, showcasing their stronger material. But once there, they showcase a range of stops and starts, time changes and in many cases the ability to just rock out and have fun. No doubt Replicator is another act that could be chalked up in the "is a lot more fun to see live" category. Nothing wrong with that, though.

Stonerrock.com

If I wanted to have a fucked up evening, there are plenty of different ways of doing it. I could, for example, grab myself a bunch of Prozac, smoke some crack, share needles with a junkie hooker, and then take her to a French dubbed black and white Woody Allen film. Or I could spend my days here coming up with some weird mathematical formula proving that my boss is actually the devil. Or I could just listen to Replicator’s newest audio contribution to the masses.

Aptly titled You Are Under Surveillance, this whole album reeks of paranoia. The bad kind, which makes little girls freak when they see you and cops usually arrest you. Honestly, I am afraid the more I listen to this album the more likely it will be that I’m going to the fucking movies tonight to watch a Woody Allen film! It’s growing on me though.

I think it would wrong to label these guys “art rock” just because of the negative connotations the term has gotten recently. Sure, the album is abstract and “arty” but it’s also aggressive, to the point, and well constructed.

The first couple times you listen to this you will be instantly reminded of Fugazi, the Mars Volta, and Regurgitator all at once. It seamlessly flows from abstract, chaotic noises to beautiful, quiet, and melancholic guitar passages that really mess with your head. At some points you want to throw this CD down the drain and before you know it these guys have enchanted again.

The first few tracks need some getting used, the opener really being more of an intro and second one (“Alert status: 0”) not really being a good track to open up an album with. The third track “It Seems Like the Real Deal, but Citizenship Doesn’t Hurt,” is insane. This is the track that made me want to smoke crack and go watch art house movies. It is rammed full of staccato guitar bits, aligned with strange rhythmic vocals, and aggressive, edgy drumming that makes you want to kick your commuting neighbour’s shins. Their lyrics are mainly political and angry, which surprisingly doesn’t get annoying as the mix them quite regularly with movie or sound outtakes, ala Ministry back in the days.

Track four on the album is rightly called “Epoch.” Not only is it over seven minutes long, but also it’s a perfect description of what is going on with this band. It starts off with an aggressive, almost metal-like guitar riff and runs into a nice mid tempo groove that gets accentuated by those typically Fugazi-like guitars. It is also their most structured tune, and it finishes off on a one and a half minute beautifully quiet guitar part. The song is oddly melodic and definitely the best one on the album.

Replicator are good, I like it a lot, just not every day. I have listened to this album on days where I have hated it and then there are days when you’ll love it. Usually the kind of days when you’re on drugs watching Woody Allen movies.

San Francisco Bay Guardian

If there were a soundtrack for the nation's year in events, Replicator's second release, You Are under Surveillance, would be it. The Oakland trio's album brings home all the paranoia, fear, and disgust felt by at least one in three Americans. Paired with the band's style of ironic-to-just-plain-goofy humor, the songs remain opinionated without being overly critical. On opening track "The Frogurt© Is Cursed," rambunctious vocalist (and Bay Guardian contributor) Conan Neutron sets the mood by shouting, "Get mad you son-of-a-bitches!," followed by shrill-sounding drum 'n' bass arrangements straight out of a Bond movie. But Neutron slyly adds comic relief to the angst-filled track with a breezy "Just take it easy, man." Benjamin Adrian's guttural bass and cheeky sampling, plus Christopher Bolig's rowdy percussion, add fuel to the fire and make the already hyper-driven sounds rock solid. On "It Seems Like the Real Deal, but the Citizenship Doesn't Hurt," parts of a George W. Bush speech on terrorism are sampled along with Neutron's mantra, "[Terrorists] go, go back on the first boat back!" Their political and pop culture samplings are laid on thick throughout the album, making for a sweet surprise and kicking the album to the top of any cult punk's list.

-Stephanie Laemoa

indieworkshop

Not content with merely pummeling its’ audience with an avalanche of drums, bass, and guitar, Oakland, CA’s Replicator adds salt to the wounds with copious samples and electronic noises, as well as a variety of vocal stylings from its’ two singing instrumentalists. Not a bad little combination, especially when you hear the skill with which every one of these aspects is executed.

Oakland seems poised to be the next Williamsburg (not the colonial one, though), with its emerging electronic-tinged acts, like Rogue Wave and Gravy Train! rocking both sides of the indie spectrum. Replicator fits nicely into that scene, while also bringing up sweet nostalgic remembrances of Chicago’s Jesus Lizard and the days of Am-Rep records (at least when they were good).

“You Are Under Surveillance” is a heavy record, just in case I haven’t described it to you well enough. The guitars are detuned but still razor sharp. The bass is thick and constantly holding down the rhythmic intensity of the songs. Lastly but not least, you got these drums and well, they sound pretty drumlike (though, on Alert Status: 0, the drumming reaches points of sheer genius).

Add to this a penchant for funny song titles, and you have a pretty damn sweet post-punk record that will fit nicely between your Shellac and your June of ’44 and Hoover. ‘Nuff said.

Exoduster

This latest from Bay Area-based Replicator is not an easy listen. With more spins you gain more appreciation from their quasi-noise art rock. Yet, a quick listen through makes you want to throw the record across the room. You can't exactly discern how much of an anarchic recording they were trying to make versus the pure quality of the band. I tend to the former given bassist Benjamin Adrian records bands for a living. Amongst the eight tracks on You Are Under Surveillance there is an abundance of samples, shouting vocals, heavily distorted guitars and a fair share of random shit. Replicator seems closest to reviving 80s electronic noise bands which consisted of actual song structure and not today's pure noise contingent. Part of Replicator's sound, as self-acknowledged, comes from using the band as an outlet for their mostly banal working stiff jobs. You definitely get the sense that Replicator is a band best experienced live than recorded.

. Math, by its nature is geekery in its most pure form. It’s nerdier than chess, Doctor Who marathons and even anime collections. When bands start tweaking with the math-rock, tempo-bumping idiom, it’s tough not to picture them sitting down to brush up their pronunciation with a dog-eared copy of The Klingon Dictionary.

Except for maybe Replicator. Part of that is because its sophomore album doesn’t rest upon seesawing tempos and dorkishly obscure musical theory. Instead, You Are Under Surveillance jangles and wrangles with the sort of unbridled noise usually reserved for bands with testosterone and chest hair rather than 20-sided dice and pipe-cleaner forearms. The trio plods along with heavy minor-chord arrangements that put quasi-metal powerhouse riffs at center stage, although there’s enough tempo-jacking tomfoolery to keep math types happy. The result is a record that somehow falls into the gigantic cracks between Big Black-styled noise, The 90 Day Men’s calculator-necessary rock and Queens of the Stone Age’s alt-metal. Confused? That could be Replicator’s ultimate point.

There’s another reason Replicator isn’t your standard-issue crew of calculus geeks: The band doesn’t take itself very seriously. Titles like “The Frogurt is Cursed,” “Warrior Needs Food, Badly” and “The Weight of Three Marlon Brandos” hint at the band’s off-center sensibilities. Equally strange is the flood of samples that mix it up with the band’s sparse vocals for an effect that’s half Paul’s Boutique cheese and avant-garde, uh, crackers. Replicator makes enough noise to rumble your liver, but deep down inside, it wants to you have a bit of fun in the swath of destruction it cuts.

-Shae Orgolisio

Read Magazine

Replicator
You Are Under Surveillance

Kind of cool angular post-hardcore, whatever the hell that means. The buzzing guitars and frantic drumming are cool, and the vocals are like a paranoid, jerky de la Rocha. The longer songs get bogged down after awhile, but overall the band is neat, if you don't mind a little avante garde abrasiveness.

Rocket Fuel

The LP starts out promisingly enough, with an original, driving drum and bass line, but Replicator's You Are Under Surveillance is an effort full of mixed results. At their best, Replicator's music sounds creative, and influenced by (but not derivitive of) a cross between Rage Against the Machine and Television. At their worst they sound like Metallica wanna-be's, or any other generic rock band.

The first half of the CD is filled with what the band refers to as "working class art rock." I don't know about you, but I don't like my art rock to be anywhere near qualifiers like "working class." Although it comes down to personal preference, to me this seems like a common problem within the Progressive Rock genre. The musicians want to create something that focuses on being artistic and intelligent, but combine this with hardcore and punk influences. In effect they try to sound high and low-brow at the same time.

The product of this is a "mid-brow" sound. By that I mean Replicator probably appeals to a wider audience, while unfortunately losing the upsides inherent to the two seperate genres. Punk music is relevant because it is raw and energetic and honest. Prog-rock is deliberate, precise, and post-modern. The punk influences clash with the need for irony in post-modern prog rock. The math rock influences neutralize the threatening, edgy, sincere side of punk. The musical value of You Are Under Surveillance plummets as a result.

The second half of the CD is a different story, though. While still containing problems, they are only shadows of those on the first half. In "Mutually Assured Repulsion," Replicator suddenly seems to find something like an original voice. Where "recontextualized" tape deck samples sounded gimmicky (track 3), and the rhythm section beat too fast and furious (track 2), there is more balance. Somehow the noisy feel is gone, and the guitar, bass, drums, and even vocals work together in harmony. Now they sound more like Recover, and even a little like Television, when Conan Neutron's "caustically angular" lead guitar is given the opportunity to shine. The trip through the rest of Replicator's latest offering is much more enjoyable. "Warrior needs food, badly," has freak-out periods, but it's more brave and experimental. "The Weight of 3 Marlon Brandos" returns to a similar fragile/bold sound as on "Mutually Assured Repulsion," with entertaining musical change-ups thrown at the li stener.

You Are Under Surveillance is definitely a mixed bag. Some of the songs leave you feeling like you've gotten your money's worth, but others aren't up to the more discriminating standards of indie-music fans. Hopefully, Replicator is able to recreate and improve the sound they displayed on the second half of this LP when they find themselves in the studio again.

-Chuck Frausto

Dead Angel - #64

Replicator -- YOU ARE UNDER SURVEILLANCE [Substandard]

Replicator is one of the many bands that probably wouldn't exist if Shellac and Slint had never released any records, but you shouldn't hold that against them. Unlike a lot of bands on the Shellac / Slint tip, these guys (a trio with the odd helping hand here and there) have the chops to back up their play and the songwriting skills necessary to keep things moving. They also have a fondness for discussing paranoia, the evil that governments do, the consequences of consumerism, and Marlon Brando, which never hurts. The Shellac and Slint references are unavoidable (especially since their most outspoken / highly visible member, Conan Neutron, is also the guitarist, and bespectacled, and a principled dude, just like the legendarily cranky Alweenie), but there's much more to them than that -- if anything, they remind me more of Breaking Circus and early Killing Joke (especially on "It seems like the real deal, but the citizenship doesn't hurt"), and they are most enamored of the o dd but telling sound bite, weird noises, and other forms of chatter I associate more with noise and extreme electronica. Then, too, their concerns are inverted -- Conan may sound an awful lot like Steve Albini at times (whether by nature or design I can't even guess, and don't particularly care about anyway), but where Steve's righteous anger is generally directed at opaque, even cryptic personal situations whose real meaning is only evident to the band, Conan's anger is directed at oppressive bullshit and urging people to fix or dismantle The System. Steve may sound like a cranky old man, but Conan sounds more like the voice in the wilderness. (A wilderness populated by a really loud drummer and a bassist capable of levitating buildings, but still.)

At the core of it all, they rock -- drummer Chris Bolig in particular sounds like he's breaking shit even when he's quiet, and Conan sure gets worked up in a tizzy from time to time, spitting out hyperkinetic riffs of sometimes absurd complexity, frequently at a velocity indicative of excessive pill consumption (although the idea of Conan actually needing artifical assistance for his guitar hijinks is pretty hilarious, and equally unlikely). Through all the chaos, bassist Ben Adrian holds the floor down in such smooth fashion he might as well be playing in an ice-cream gangsta suit. Strange experiments in engineering abound, the band consistently plays with both precision and feeling (a tricky combination to master), and if it sometimes resembles Shellac a bit too much for its own good, well, what's a poor boy from Oakland to do? Bonus points for the totally boss "The weight of 3 Marlon Brandos" (which actually lives up to its title, and then some), in which Conan demonstrate s that he can play real purty-like when it so moves him, before they all come together to crush your skull over and over with great precision. If more bands put this much effort into their work (which shows) and turned out such consistent results, maybe the music landscape wouldn't suck so much now. Go buy lots of copies of this so Conan can amass the bling-bling it takes to run for Prez and win. (Or you could just listen to the album for the sheer pleasure of it alone, I suppose....)

SF Weekly

Replicator
You Are Under Surveillance
BY GARRETT KAMPS
garrett.kamps@sfweekly.com

There's much to like about this record. Let's start with the song titles. "The Frogurt© Is Cursed" -- that's a good one, pretty self-explanatory. "It Seems Like the Real Deal, But the Citizenship Doesn't Hurt" -- hmmm, can't figure that out, but it's funny, no? Also, "Warrior Needs Food, Badly" -- a reference to the most awesome of awesome old-school arcade games, Gauntlet. So, then: Song titles = good. What else = good here? Oh, everything. Beginning with track one's opening sample, which announces, "Get mad you son of a bitches!," this album is a brooding bevy of rusty-razor riffs, 10-ton bass lines, hollered vocals, and drums that drive the whole careening mess like a rodeo clown taming a mechanical bull. Having tightened up their paranoid noise-tornadoes for this, their second full-length, the members of Oakland's Replicator soundtrack the schizophrenia induced by media overload as only those truly infected with the disease could. The effect is, to borrow t he title of track seven, heavier than "The Weight of 3 Marlon Brandos."

Slap Magazine:

Replicator
You are Under Surveillance
Substandard Records

As cheesy as it sounds, sometimes when I’m listening to Replicator the thought pops into my brain – this is the sound of breaking shit. It just seems like the perfect soundtrack for a good, old-fashioned freak out. Historically, this Oakland, California trio has drawn a lot of comparisons, praise and criticism for sounding a lot like Shellac, and it was mostly justifiable; but this sophomore LP (they’ve also released an EP between the two full lengths) finds the band very much coming into their own sound. Sure, the Shellac comparison is still there, but their current output is much darker and more frantic than anything that Albini & company have ever produced. Personally, I also hear a good chunk of Brainiac and Jesus Lizard buried in there as well, and nearly every song is rounded out with any number of oddball samples (one song in particular samples a recording of wank-off metalhead Yngwie Malmsteen freaking out on an airline flight, somethin g that was floating around the internet for a while about a year back and was good for quite a few laughs). Do yourself a favor and check out the audio samples at www.replicator5000.com if you’re so inclined.

-Jake Thomas

* ""ep reviews

Splendid E-Zine

...The rap on Replicator is that the band rocks too hard for the latte-sipping punk deconstructionists, and at the same time, it's a little too complicated for the guys who just want to party. That's great for the rest of us, because Replicator skates the thin line between thrash and art. It's music that will rock your head while it shakes your body, and split your eardrums while it shatters your misconceptions...
-Jennifer Kelly

I believe Replicator play what the kids call "math rock." You would think that would be rock as interpreted by engineers, calculus majors, and computer scientists. Believe me, there's nothing scarier than a pissed-off nerd (look at Alweenie). But no, "math-rock" means twitchy, angular riffs played against odd time signatures, along with spoken / sung lyrics, and it can be played by anyone, even English majors. The guys in Replicator are quite good at it. They do bump into genre touchstones such as Slint and Shellac, and vocalist Conan Neutron does sound uncanninly like Alweenie at times, but Replicator add enough little touches (keyboards, an uptempo lurchiness, little electronic glitches / washes) to stand on their own.

-Neddal

Drowning in Culture

"Replicator is a three piece independent ROCK band" or so says the first line of their bio on the Replicator website. ROCK is a pretty good description for this Bay Area band who crank out the tunes with all of the blood and gristle reminiscent of a cattle-drive colliding with a freight train. When I first got an earful of the trio at the Smell in Los Angeles, I thought I was 16 again listening to a set ala Touch N' Go records (yeah, that's right- Big Black, Jesus Lizard, TAR, etc...you know when bands were made of real men playing "real man songs"). Replicator explodes into each track on this self-titled EP with the power of an atom bomb dropped twice. The guitar (only one guys? Come on!) is in a constant angry duet with the heavy trudging bass lines that cruise relentlessly alongside boot-stomping percussion. The tracks are interspersed with tasty little tape loops, which seem more tongue n' cheek than for effect. Despite playing some seriously heavy music, the boys in Replicator seem to understand that they're a little silly, and in today's limp-wristed, uber-Emo world, a tad too strong for the thrift-store set. If you're feeling anemic and in need of more meat in your diet, than Replicator is the special dish you crave. But if you like your Broccoli over a good hearty steak and bacon sandwich- stay home please.

-John Southern

The Brainwashed Brain

Replicator are a neat dynamic rock trio from the San Francisco Bay Area who get compared to Shellac a lot. This seems to be mostly because Shellac bassist Bob Weston records them and because they are quite vocal on the Shellac email list, which is how I happened to hear about them. To me a much better comparison would be Poster Children, but imagine how they might have ended up had they introduced the loops and synths of Salaryman into their exuberant rockpop shapes instead of separating into two different projects involving the same people. But enough of comparisons, Replicator have their own thing and they've built on and transcended the solid foundation of their debut album Winterval with a quartet of addictive angular rockin' bursts of hopeful angst. The EP opens with Validation Complex, a tongue in cheek spoken self help therapy session for hardcore kids, with singer / guitarist Conan Neutron reciting multi-tracked paens to the powerful foundations of confidence, before erupting into choppy oriental chord trashing. The weakest aspect of their debut was probably the vocals, and on this track they cleverly turn that into a strength with double tracked tricks. "It's a blast of utter frustration," so begins the stormin' Bawkbakawk Bawkbagone and as the day wore on the situation deteriorated but in the interests of self preservation it wasn't something they concerned themselves with, even if it had rendered their song titles nigh on incomprehensible to mere psueud mag eds. Despite such frivolity, Replicator do stop on a dime to squawk like an unruly hen or three. Their use of programmed loops has become more intrinsically organic to the songwriting process than on Winterval, and marks them high in moderninity. They never forget that their job is to rock yer ass, but like many of the best bands they realise this does not have to be a brainless shake. This EP was recorded over a year ago, and apparently the tracks have evolved somewhat and some might be reworked for the album that Replicator are currently recordig. Check the label site for links to songs. It would be wonderful if they could get over to the UK for some gigs. Perhaps Bob Weston might consider them for the line up of next year's All Tomorrow's Parties? I find it amazing that a band this good has to be self releasing a CD-R. What's the matter with record labels these days?

- Graeme Rowland

Sincere Brutality

Just when I was thinking that the three-piece rock formula had been done to absolute death and ready for decay, I have had the distinct pleasure of reviewing two AMAZING guitar/bass/drums bands this round (see 31 Knots). But whereas 31 Knots is more jazzy and almost progish in approach, Replicator is more firmly rooted in Rock. That combined with Bob Weston (of Shellac)'s recording of the album gives you an idea of what you are in for. A tight band with a fantastic first recording, self released. Wow… …Anyway, for the most part, the songs alternate between instrumentals that really show off their stuff, and silly-lyriced songs self-consciously sang by guitarist Conan. Here's where the Shellac reference comes in. But, I'd like to site Honor Role as a point of reference as well for it's meandering stories of being annoyed by other people and the little characters involved. Replicator takes it's time to realize a song's natural build-up, delivery and completion without relying on cliches or taking up way too much of your time with repetition. The record gets loud when it needs to be and gentle when it appropriate. A completely pleasing and satisfying listen reminding me in some respects of A Minor Forest as well as Cars Get Crushed and all those old San Francisco bands. Honorable.
-James Squeaky