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Void Fill
EP #2
(independent) - 2020
Michael Panontin
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Void Fill straddle a couple of very wide gaps, one temporal and the other spatial. Temporally, they bridge those angular guitar riffs and surly rants of 1980 post-punk with the more playful grooves of the Madchester scene a decade or so later. But the trio is also two-thirds Canadian and a third Brit, and in a quintessentially millennial way use the internet to construct their tracks from either side of the Atlantic.
Jakob Rehlinger, who handles the bulk of the instrumentation (bass, melodica, synths, drum machines and the occasional extra guitar) walked CM through the band's genesis. "Ken Holiday (our guitarist) and I had been in a band called the Clap in BC in the mid-2000s," he explained. "Then I moved to Ontario, effectively ending that project. After he also moved out here a few years ago, we decided to collaborate again."
By 2017, the guys had laid down much of the track that would become their debut 12", 'Clickbait', but were stuck on how to add vocals to it. And so with the tapes gathering dust on the shelf as it were and the guys sort of spinning their wheels, Rehlinger was struck with a brainwave. "After sitting on it for six months, I had the idea that British vocalist Pete F. Davies would be perfect for the job." The results are nearly alchemical, with the Gad Whip singer's Mark E. Smith-meets-the Streets' Mike Skinner style just the sort of thing their sound needed. The guys then wrote another six instrumentals, this time with Davies specifically in mind, and issued them under the matter-of-fact sounding EP #2.
The bulk of the disc, which Void Fill have ominously subtitled 'More songs about paranoia and the collapse of civilization', eschews the subtler melodica-tinged elements of 'Clickbait' for a rougher-hewn urgency that conveniently befits these virus-laced times. The opening 'Insult Yourself' gets to the point right off the top, pairing a marching beat and some scything guitar with Davis' seething rant. Other tracks ('Dot 2 Dot' for one) grind out a slower, post-millennial tension, hence the paranoia part, I suppose. But 'Brutal MF' is the one we've been waiting for all these years. It's a glorious amalgam of fun and vitriol that recalls the days so long ago when people actually danced with gritted teeth and clenched fists.
Fans of the Fall, !!! and especially the first couple of records by Royal Family and the Poor (most notably their criminally forgotten 'Rackets' from the 1980 comp A Factory Quartet) would do well to check this stuff out. Seriously.
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