Kooba Tercu Post “Batman” Video
Posted in Bootleg Theater on December 7th, 2016 by JJ Koczan
Sometimes life is weird. Like the parts of it when you listen to the noise-jazz psychedelic wash of Athenian outfit Kooba Tercu. Those are definitely some strange times. The band, who may or may not represent themselves in the entirety of a single character — referenced below as the disaffected Johnny Tercu — released their self-titled debut album last year in a vinyl edition of 250 LPs, and operated immediately in a wide swath of sonic influences, from jagged indie to worldly percussive tendencies and well beyond into a number of approaches to psychedelia. I’m not sure all of it was completely under control, but neither am I sure it was supposed to be.
What Kooba Tercu made most plain in their debut — a track from which was featured in a podcast here — was that there’s very little that’s off the table, rhythmically, melodically or otherwise in their arrangements. Yet to listen to the skronk bounce of opener “Ukunta” or the later punker blast of “Spit Bucket,” the album doesn’t sound overbaked or overthought. Part of that might stem from the band recording (mostly) live, but as one watches the vague imagery take cohesive form much like the song itself in their new video for “Batman,” I think it makes an eerie kind of sense within the context they establish. And by that I basically mean it makes no sense but the problem is expecting that it would. Free your mind. Then hit play.
Then, if you’re so inclined, you can hit up Kooba Tercu‘s Bandcamp (linked below), where the album is currently a name-your-price download. Don’t expect “Batman,” which is mostly instrumental, to speak for the entirety of the record, because it won’t, but it does encapsulate some of the anti-genre mentality, and the blown-out fuzz that comes to dominate later in the track is worth the price of admission on its own. What, if anything, it has to do with the DC Comics character, I haven’t a clue, but if you’ve heard them before or if you haven’t, I hope you dig it.
Have at you:
Kooba Tercu, “Batman” official video
Johnny Tercu and his crew spend time in a moist, rat & cockroach infested basement playing something loud and heavy. He ventures pointlessly into nothingness with the same sense of no future as most people in Athens these days.
After endless hours of jamming, Kooba Tercu has distilled the ideas developed over a couple of years in ten songs resulting in something that sounds incredibly familiar but maybe not quite like anything you’ve heard before.
Recorded live. And then overdubs.
