Irepress

A message from a friend on myspace: Subject: Samus Octology Body: I ordered Samus Octology from your site (through CD Baby) and received it the other day...All I can say is HOLY SHIT!!! If I were a music critic, my review would be as follows: Being an admitted audiophile is somewhat difficult in this day and age due to all the mindless derivitive scenester copycat crap that is floating around out there, and having a music collection that contains over 1,500cd's, 2,000 vinyl lp's, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 cassettes makes selecting music rather difficult at any given moment. Therefore, my listening habits tend to involve mood more than anything else. Being relatively new to myspace has afforded me the opportunity to scope out more underground D.I.Y. projects, which span the spectrum from either the completely ridiculous to the totally mind blowing, and after hearing IREPRESS' album Samus Octology, this band from Boston MOST DECIDEDLY falls into the latter category. Instrumental music is a genre which I tend to gravitate towards as I mature, for the simple reason that music is expressive enough in and of itself (if it's GOOD music), and therefore words and vocals truthfully do not need to be utilized if the musicians are both talented and expressive enough in their communicativeness as a collective unit, and on this record, IREPRESS are involved in a musical conversation of EPIC proportions. On Samus Octology, IREPRESS have found (presumably on their first recorded outing) an independent voice for themselves in spite of all the derivitive drivel that is "new" music in the latter half of this decade, and although there are definitely perceptible and identifiable ELEMENTS that I hear within their music, these are simply nods to some other amazing bands I listen to which have miraculously found their way into the musical palette IREPRESS uses to paint their auditory materpieces. For example, IREPRESS paints soundscapes that evoke the intellectual musical prowess of the likes of Gordian Knot and Dream Theatre, the interlocking mathematical intricacies of Discipline, Beat, and Three of a Perfect Pair era King Crimson, the diabolically accurate metronomic punctuality of Botch, the ferocious intensity of Converge, in addition to the delicate new age jazz musings of The Mercury Program and the dreamy etheral meanderings of Blind Idiot God without the dub aspect. Take all of these perceptible elements and mix them into a solidly produced amalgam of auditory majesty, and you have an inkling of how incredibly amazing this record is. It is both dynamic and otherworldy, grounded yet eerily visual with its dreamlike presentation, and at intervals, bone crunchingly intense with a sternum crushing bottom end. In my opinion, IREPRESS have re-invented the musical wheel with this endeavor, and have created an intellectually and musically gratifying record. The fact that there are no lyrics or vocals definitely adds to the