Out of the substantial crop of post-punk groups from Toronto whose sense of musical irreverence and abstract approach to songwriting has both endeared and alienated listeners, dd/mm/yyyy are certainly the best of the bunch. Balancing the jerky rhythmic sense of Red Light Sting with the atypical melodic styling of bands like the Fall or Television, songs such as "Teenageartfagcancerfanclub provide a rousing sing-along, a math rock breakdown, and hand-claps all layered on top of a surprisingly hooky organ part. The keyboard sounds on the record give all of the proceedings an almost-Klezmer-like feel, particularly on the bouncy jaunt of "City Nights/Warez Ur Head @. While the records first eight songs represent the band as a whole, the remaining 16 are the work of individual members, forming the section of the disc known as The Journey to and Escape from the Fortress of the Fluffy Love Cloud. Ranging from the droning electronic experimentation of "The Lost Toys to the jazzy breaks of "So Cold, most of these tracks are hit or miss. While an interesting appendix to the bands complete work, they verge on self-indulgent, finding it difficult to live up to the impressive strength of the records initial blast of energy and originality.
Why did you choose to include the compositions of individual band members? Guitarist/vocalist Thomas Del Balls: We wanted this album to reflect the reality of our efforts, and also to give the effect of the band embarking on a journey into the mind. Blue Screen represents our refined ideas about punk music as well as a group of songs that we have been performing live for almost two years now as a single piece. Fluffy Love Cloud was an actual place where the entire band lived, wrote, recorded, drew, silk-screened and dreamt for about seven months. We wanted to document the strongest ideas that came out of the experience of living in one room together for better or for worse.
Why do you insist on making peoples lives difficult with your difficult name? >/b> In our minds we dont actually have a band name, because dd/mm/yyyy is a concept. All that a performance artist needs to do to validate their art is date and document it; otherwise it is considered a "happening. We are always changing our performance whether or not they are big or small changes. Hopefully it gets people thinking and maybe a little interested. Its nice not having a name, but it seems that dd/mm/yyyy has become the most standard. Maybe eventually we will just turn into the infinity symbol, like Prince.
(Busy Bodies)Why did you choose to include the compositions of individual band members? Guitarist/vocalist Thomas Del Balls: We wanted this album to reflect the reality of our efforts, and also to give the effect of the band embarking on a journey into the mind. Blue Screen represents our refined ideas about punk music as well as a group of songs that we have been performing live for almost two years now as a single piece. Fluffy Love Cloud was an actual place where the entire band lived, wrote, recorded, drew, silk-screened and dreamt for about seven months. We wanted to document the strongest ideas that came out of the experience of living in one room together for better or for worse.
Why do you insist on making peoples lives difficult with your difficult name? >/b> In our minds we dont actually have a band name, because dd/mm/yyyy is a concept. All that a performance artist needs to do to validate their art is date and document it; otherwise it is considered a "happening. We are always changing our performance whether or not they are big or small changes. Hopefully it gets people thinking and maybe a little interested. Its nice not having a name, but it seems that dd/mm/yyyy has become the most standard. Maybe eventually we will just turn into the infinity symbol, like Prince.