GROK obviously love a good gimmick. Their website is programmed to spontaneously generate a different structure and colour with every new visit, and their entirely improvised debut album, ‘Ruined Music for Everyone’, takes this concept of randomness yet further.

The group is a collective based around New Zealand-born but London-based singer and bassist Scott Brodie. It also features amongst its members guitarist Chris Ayles and drummer Rob Talsma, who both used to play with Brodie in power pop band Girlinky, and three synthesiser players.

In their press sheet GROK explain, “GROK recorded 31 songs over a busy weekend in early 2007. All of the songs were recorded live with no pre-conceived plans, ideas or lyrics. The edited results form the ten tracks on ‘Ruined Music for Everyone.’”

The group improvise live and in recordings by beginning with a mental image that provides a starting point for themes, lyrics and musical direction, and use their home-made Wheel of Chordal Destiny spinner to create a key.

It all sounds like a recipe for disaster, the sort of thing which might have seemed like a really clever idea several drinks down the line in the pub, but if anyone was actually stupid enough to put into practice could only lead to catastrophe.

‘Ruined Music for Everyone’ does have a few shaky moments. Brodie’s vocals are somewhat reedy and occasionally out-of-tune, and the production work sometimes crosses over the divide between being deliberately lo-fi and becoming muddy.

Yet it is surprisingly effective. With each of its ten tracks segueing into one another, ‘Ruined Music for Everyone’ strikes a strange balance somewhere between Pink Floyd and Pavement, long passages of rambling instrumental progressive rock merging with a slacker pop sound, and ramshackle tunes reminiscent of classic Flying Nun label bands such as the Bats combining with a more minimal Krautrock sound.

Several of Brodie’s lyrics are of the boy-meets-girl, boy-gets-dumped variety, but sometimes he also shows himself capable of more. On the genuinely poignant ‘GROK 1-The Ruined Map’ a torn map serves as a symbol for a dying relationship. ‘GROK 17-‘Pink Shirt’ is hysterically, venomously very funny (“I can tell you I really have had it with your pink shirt/Why the hell do you wear a pink shirt ?/You’ve got no feminine side”). On the final ‘GROK 24-Transmission from a Dying Civilisation’ Brodie concludes that he wishes that he “was born twenty years ago.” He possibly should have been. In another more experimental musical era, GROK, whose music throws back to both the early 70’s and the late 80’s in its influences, would probably have done very well.

GROK suggest that, as in the spirit in which it was recorded, ’Ruined Music for Everyone’ should perhaps only be played once, but Brodie and his band mates are such accomplished musicians that it stands up to repeated listens. Constantly engaging and never dull, ‘Ruined Music for Everyone’ is a far better album than it should have been.


Track Listing