The Micronite Filters

The Micronite Filters opens up into a CD-sized gatefold sleeve. The interaction with the packaging is an ergodic allusion to the classic rock-era experience of opening up a double LP. This, you say to yourself, is going to be something really big! But, as with Queen’s Queen II and its division into sides White and Blackque, these discs are suggestive but ultimately empty, formal divisions imposed upon the material. Each sleeve contains its own disc, each disc contains two parts of a four-part sequence. There are heapings of rock goodness for the taking. The verso sleeve features the image of a grinning dude sitting cross-legged, playing his guitar. It’s a fitting emblem for an album that revels in the electric guitar and all of its tones. The opening track, “Twist Off Tops,” launches burst of wah-wah against acoustic guitar and veers from insistent scrubbing to rubbery, spacey grooves, laying out the sonic juxtapositions in one song that latter reappear between the songs and which characterize the album as a whole. The album’s musical DNA is derived from classic rock but its whimsies, eccentricities and self-indulgences are totally 21st century indie rock (Erik Weissengruber)