It’s been a while but Conquistadors are back. The enforced hiatus following vocalist James’s travel round

If you’re looking for some home grown music with a bit of edge and bite, you could do far, far worse than listening to Conquistadors. The four piece act have been producing challenging (in a good way) music since they first started up in 2008. Apart from a brief hiatus for sight-seeing around the world, Conquistadors have been honing their trade as loud musical experimentalists with fantastic results.

A great start:

Their opening EP featured a whole plethora of sounds and styles. In one song alone (“Ave Maria”), the band took the listener on a sonic voyage of discovery from Spanish flavours through Ska-ish sounds to Prog-Rock meanderings.

This was followed in 2009 with a shorter two track EP called Rochelle, Rochelle, named after a Sienfeld in-joke. One of these tracks, “Bake Your Cake and Eat It” now reappears remastered on the band’s latest offering, “On Tape” - a mini album full of noise, radio tuning, fantastic experimental noodling and yet more noise. Conquistadors’ (Conks, for short) third EP/mini album is their first with their new label, Birmingham’s own Godmonkey Recordings.

The record is an excellent summary of where the band are (and have been) to date featuring new songs, the above mentioned remastering and two remixes of band favourites. Apparently a further EP will be on its way after recording restarts in April. It’s all go in the land of Conks.

Track by track:

So what can we expect from On Tape? Well, the EP proper starts off with “Black Swans”, a fast paced indie track interspersed with dirty guitars weaving between each other chaotically, constantly upping the pace and the ante. Next song, “Homework” starts off slightly more sedately while maintaining a busy sounding mechanical guitar riff, but soon escalates into another explosion of glorious noise before dying away towards something poignant and rather lovely. Who’d have thought!

All of which makes the following track “Oh, Luxembourg!” all the more startling, commencing as it does with a series of yells, the volume of which hasn’t been heard since Angie and Den Watts split up on Eastenders. But for all that noise, things eventually calm down to a less headache inducing level with a nice little bit of waltz time counterpoint taking the song towards its close. Don’t expect them to be gliding round the dance floor on Strictly Come Dancing this Christmas, but there is something rather charming about it.

The EP closes with the elegiac “Nails”, a remix of one of the next EP’s tracks. It’s full of haunting strings and despairing yells. Painful yes, but heartbreakingly beautiful as well.

“I can’t hear a word you’re saying!”:

Lyrics, as ever, are often intelligible, but for the occasional nuggets of clarity. Whatever the songs are about, there seems to be a pervading theme of science and science fiction. “I’ve got a spaceman’s suit” runs one line in “Black Swans” while “Homework” features the “You need time travel to repair what you’ve done”.

To brand Conquistadors’ sound as being just noisy (however glorious) is to undersell them. And to undersell them a lot. This band is no Slipknot or Cradle of Filth. Theirs is not noise designed for noise’s sake (and the additional benefit for teenagers to annoy their parents).

The real gloriousness to be found in Conks’ music is their playfulness, their inventiveness. It is the sheer scale of these four musicians’ imagination that any glory can be found. And the fact that their music can, at times, be a little loud is just an added bonus. Great stuff!

“On Tape” is released on 1 April 2011.

Previous reviews:
Conquistadors
Rochelle, Rochelle

Related links:
Conquistadors website
Conquistadors on Myspace