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KERRETTA: Vilayer

From the label that brought us Jakob comes the new instrumental guitar band behemoth on the block, Kerretta. An inscrutable mandala-themed gatefold sleeve hints at the art-damaged heaviness within. Big slabs of guitar texture hammer the anvil while maintaining a tight grip on dynamics, tone and melody. It’s not all about forcefulness though, White Lie employs some winsome acoustic slide around a cherokee-flavoured tune. The Square Outside builds with echoed delay notes. A three-piece from parts undisclosed, the band exist in a dimly-lit industrial wasteland alongside Isis, HDU, Bailterspace and Ender. Kerretta carve out wide open spaces with their arrangements and eke maximum emotion from the instruments, be it melancholia, excitement or tenderness. Guitarist (and mastermind producer) Dave Holmes must have a stompbox labelled ‘mountainous’. The drums are dry and precise, bass firmly entrenched – it’s robot rock, but a robot that is prone to existential angst. This rubbed me up the right way, hugely enjoyable.

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