This excellent angular clanging monster of a song comes from Dunedin 4-piece Bathysphere. It’s a darkly wonderful combination of anxiety-inducing guitar repetition with crushing bass and drums and mysterious submerged vocals called “Window”:

In keeping with the band name (a spherical pressurised chamber lowered from a boat for deep sea observation) “Window” has a claustrophobic feel as that insistent menacing riff provides a hypnotic pulse, while somewhere behind and through the needling sonic miasma guitarist/ vocalist Julie Dunn is a subdued and re-assuring human presence. Then it all turns itself inside out and the last minute is a slow rolling, writhing, broil of guitars, bass and drums. From angular post-punk into post-rock noise in 3 minutes.

The band is a who’s-who of the Dunedin music underground, including Trace / Untrace Records founders Julie Dunn (Asta Rangu, Mary Berry) and Richard Ley-Hamilton (Asta Rangu, Space Bats, Attack!, Males), with Josh Nicholls (Koizilla, Space Bats, Attack!, Asta Rangu, Fazed on a Pony) and Peter McCall (Fazed on a Pony).

As a one off song/ single to announce the band it’s gloriously noisy, hypnotic, melodic and mysterious stuff, leaving plenty of room for listener imagination. Hopefully there is more to come in this vein as Dunedin’s Bathysphere continue to explore the mysterious monster-filled depths of the underwater underground.

Bathysphere play at the Welcome To Nowhere Festival in Whanganui this weekend.