It's possible, due to obvious stylistic connections to My Bloody Valentine and Stereolab, to refer to Quickspace's music as "sped-up drone" without feeling like you're a disappointment to the human race. Superficially, that's what it sounds like.
Of course, Quickspace have more on their agenda than knocking off Shields, Gane et al. Born in the ruins of Th' Faith Healers, Quickspace are no strangers to idiosyncratic pop. Building on a foundation of blissfully feedback-drenched guitar, they add a wealth of detail -- busy, New-Zealandish guitar melodies, elegantly mournful strings, understated stabs of electronic filigree and a wildly divergent vocal approach. Frontman Tom Cullinan (he of Th' Faith Healers pedigree) lets his voice slink from your speakers like a heroin-depleted Bowie, his words seemingly built on a rotten foundation and constantly at the brink of collapse. Nina Pascale offsets this with a combination of sing-song simplicity and raw-throated feverish energy.
Shorter tunes like "Munchers No Munchers" retain a basic pop aesthetic, though they seethe with rhythmic detail -- you'll catch yourself listening to the guitars and thinking "That sounds like a lot of work..." "Gloriana" seems suspiciously languid, but be prepared -- its easy groove will eventually unleash complex vocal harmonies modified by theremin warbling, not to mention a respectable storm front of guitar squall. And be prepared to mistake that theremin for a human voice on "They Shoot Horse, Don't They"?
As a listener, you'll probably feel rich -- though it helps not to have expected (or wanted) traditional verse-chorus-verse structure in the first place. It's a predictable failing of Quickspace's "kitchen sink" compositional style that some of the tunes wind up sounding aimless, at least by pop-song standards.
You'll probably get the most out of The Death of Quickspace if you're the sort of person who buys records not so much for great songs as for perfect measures and moments. As sequences of loosely-connected musical events go, it's an album full of epiphanies -- and also a disc you can leave playing all day without ever truly getting your mind around it.
