Are They Masks? – dd/mm/yyyy

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Somewhere between a Toronto dive and the cold tundras of Canada’s northern territories, there are a bunch of dudes sitting around a digital camp fire, warming their hands and keeping an eye on Frank Zappa, who’s rotating over the flames on a skewer. Our old guard hero of 70s funkscurity is being rotisserie tenderized above the choral chants of dd/mm/yyyy (day-month-year), our favorite new demonic punk rock sextet.

“Take that prog rock, you fucking pussies!” is somewhere discerned in the bleating of their army of synthesizers (Arp Odyssey, clavichord, Moog Voyager, sequential circuits prophet-6, Yamaha cs-60, leslie organ, Korg ms-20) as they shout coy slogans: “We are not your typical bourgeois girls / We have the power to change the world… We look the same!”

Zappa's groaning for someone to let him down, but there's really no hope, we can't hear him over all this ranting and that's just the three-minute twister “Twinstars”. Fast forward to the hazy oscillations of “As Clouds” or back track to the gloaming undertones of “Sun Moon”; there's a lot to take in on this fast and heady brew – 21 tracks in all.