Exploring an intricate style of post rock broadly comparable to Viennese compatriots Radian, Tupolev are a four-piece featuring piano, bass and cello, drums and electronics. Towers of Sparks is their second album, favouring clear yet jagged melodies and absrupt timing shifts, kind of a Math Rock jazz trio type thing, tight yet also ambling and limber.
‘Pole’ opens in TNT era Tortoise territory, shuffling brushed percussion rubbed against firmly Chicago-esque bass runs. With Peter Holy’s piano in the lead role there are comparisons also to be made with Chicagoans Gastr Del Sol, particularly in slow pieces like ‘Juno’ and most of ‘Towers of Sparks’. ‘Petroleum’ is faster and more confronting, lurching rhythms and dissonant piano patterns vaguely pointing to jazz fusion, but the bass keeps it in contemporary throughout Tupolev create novel and interesting musical forms. It’s also very well recorded and sounds great.
Joshua Meggitt
