Album Details

• Artist: The Two Koreas
• Album: Science Island
• Label: Last Gang
• Year of Release: 2011
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: patchen on 2011-03-05

"Science Island" is the third release by Toronto's Two Koreas, their third extended exploration of a sound that is quickly becoming their own. A combination of post-rock, Mission of Burma-esque dirge punk, shoegaze and good solid power pop, The Two Koreas play mighty, majestic and catchy rock, which manages to hit on both timeless and original grooves.

The minimal punk poetry of "Midnight Brown" and "Withering Heights" are truly hypnotic, as are "Disco-Slave Heaven" and "Dinck Helen;" both seemed tossed off, brilliant asides, or, more likely, easy brilliance of the band.

The closer, "Majored in Swimming," is monumental: loud, dramatic, funny, and otherworldly.  Many  a band would be happy with this as their ultimate statement. Something tells me that The Two Koreas are just getting going.

In the non-existent world of expectations, a band's third record is supposed to be the mature one, the record where the band hit their stride or fail to build off of whatever earlier success they've had or just recycle in hopes no one knows the difference. But expectations are what you think might or hope might happen, rarely what does.  "Science Island" neither looks ahead or back but sits in its own space, exploring, expanding, discovering just how much there is to work with. The Two Koreas have a sonic world of unknown depths.

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