Minor Crisis

Temple

Minor Crisis is a reformation of innate hype. Ex-members of The Chariot and Zao, poised to take on the world with a new sludgy, trance, electronic, rock and blues dance creation, their Venn diagram of analog and digital. In their overlapping world, the digital sounds like what would come out of a television in 2014 after you found an old VHS player and worn-in tape and hooked it up for nostalgia’s sake. The drums are big – but not John Bonham big – and they’re at their best here, setting the analog pace. They groove, but theirs is a faster step.

The result of the crashing worlds is a creation called Temple, and it’s not so much a great album, but it will be remembered as an important one. There is a new noise in the air. It’s not fake-’80s throwback noise, but rather legitimate production polishing up what an old Beastie Boys album would sound like in the era of Miley Cyrus. It’s got a vague hint of Jay-Z’s “99 Problems,” and the sound has the stones of Jack White if he had a DJ.

To speak of its faults is important, too, as any new era, by its very nature, doesn’t have its sea legs yet. How can the genre grow? Who can take the challenge Minor Crisis has laid out, and push the genre to the tipping point? You listen to Temple and you know it’s not the definitive end, but you certainly respect what the artist has put together.

It’ll be fun to see, as the album should create a new frame of reference in musicians’ minds, picking at them, daring them to race for pinks. It could even be Minor Crisis themselves who look back 10 years from now on their own work, knowing then their best work was still to come.

The band has a fun arena to work in, one where some of the best results have come from the mixing and remixing of tracks, genres, artists, instruments and … that. That next big thing. That thing. You want Minor Crisis to take that marble and carve until that next big thing is set free. While it isn’t Daft Punk’s Homework, it is a step in a new direction, and sometimes that’s all that matters.