Song You Need to Know: Guttersnipe’s Giddy Noise Explosion ‘Like My Voice Was Holothurin’

Guttersnipe are an ecstatic, disgusting, blown-out, body-music-and-rainbow-noise yowl duo from Leeds, England currently making the rounds on U.K. year end lists like The Wire and The Quietus. If you like your rock music frenzied, caustic and devoid of anything resembling a melody, this might be worth a blast. Drummer Tipula Confusa is a throwback to the beastly pummel of noise-punk bands like Lightning Bolt, Hella and Deerhoof, a mix of body-music brawn and brain-music freneticism. Guitarist Uroceras Gigas has an expressionist gurgle to her guitar like Sonic Youth or Pissed Jeans (though, more accurately, the wave of mid-Aughts squealing subterranean noiseniks like Sightings, Rusted Shut and Air Conditioning). Together it’s sheer chaos, spurts played with hardcore abandon by kids into Sun Ra and Beefheart and death metal, a Xenakis composition as a loft band. All six tracks on Vent have a similar groove-and-melt, so feel free to start anywhere. “Like My Voice Was Holothurin” just one example of their explosiveness.