The famous, felonious motivational speaker Charles Manson once complimented the underground artist Joe Coleman as “a caveman in a spaceship”, a vivid notion that comes to mind again while listening to the brief and brutish Leak. Lurching basslines and troglodyte drums are packed into a pressurized capsule with the eerie screeching and interstellar oscillations of the violin and musical saw, with matters further complicated by vocal outbursts that imply some manner of neurological condition. The Nagoya-based band LeakLeek has a decent local underground pedigree, and certainly succeeds in creating something startling and unusual, a crash landing into an as-yet-undiscovered, primeval musical planetoid. Its coordinates place it within the constellation of rock, but any straight lines drawn to precedents—krautrock, no wave, proto-punk—are soon enough bent, warped, and frayed.
