Three Hundred starts with an untitled 30-second snippet of silence before launching into the fractured spazz-rock of the groaningly titled "Laundry Hepburn." That tune eventually settles into an agreeably quirky bit of bass-driven avant dance-noise à la DNA before randomly fading out and back up into a brief coda. And so it goes for the next half hour or so of largely instrumental blurts of no wave experimentation. (The occasional vocal tunes, like "Meredith Knezvitch," mostly show that at least some of the lads in
the Conformists know their
Slint albums very well.) Any listener familiar with the larger history of noise experimentation will occasionally find
Three Hundred a bit tiresome, as if they're being told a long, elaborate joke to which they already know the punch line: "Yes, yes, your band name is quite ironic indeed, very nice." But there are passages in
Three Hundred, such as the antiphonal intro to "Tax Deduction" and most of the album's lengthy closer, "You're Welcome," where this St. Louis area act is exploring an appealing sort of musical tension and release that's built more on expertly deployed dynamics than sophomoric skronk. There's something potentially very interesting here, but it can be a slog to get to the good stuff. ~ Stewart Mason