If you’ve got a couple minutes to kill at work this afternoon and feel like listening to someone’s rehearsal tapes (hey, it happens), pop over to Grim Reefer‘s MySpace. The British Columbia band — who, yes, have taken their name from a Bongzilla song — consists only of two members: guitarist/vocalist Dragos Baciu and drummer Tanner Hartmann. They’ve upload two tracks so far, “Kief” and “Third Lung.” Both were recorded live.

And they sound like it. I don’t know if I’ve ever put forth my theory on crappy practice recordings in this space, but I’m a huge fan of the idea of them. Think back to the heavy metal days of demo trading and how it changed the world. What’s different, other than the lack of postage needing to be paid? Grim Reefer, whose sound quality is better than plenty I’ve heard, are participating in a grand tradition (actually several). So, you know, good for them.

I won’t go so far as to say it’s mandatory listening, but again, if you have a minute to check it out, you might find Grim Reefer worth keeping on your radar. You don’t get so much of a sense of it from these recordings, because Baciu‘s guitar comes across so thickly, but they could use a bassist. Hopefully they’ll get to work on that and drop an update with whatever they do next. Meantime: free music, goofy name, derivatively weedian ideology. Life could be worse.

Tags: British Columbia, Canada, Grim Reefer, Unsigned bands

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 at 2:05 pm and is filed under On the Radar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.