The Berg Sans Nipple
Build with Erosion
Release Date: Mar 15, 2011
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock, Indie Electronic, Indie Pop
Record label: Team Love
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Album Review: Build with Erosion by The Berg Sans Nipple
Fairly Good, Based on 5 Critics
Based on rating 7.0/10
"I want to be an architect/ To build with erosion." That's the Berg Sans Nipple's Shane Aspegren, invoking the title track of the cut-and-paste indie duo's third LP. The lyric serves as a mission statement for the record, as Aspegren and Lori Sean Berg spend its 46 minutes tightly editing decayed or decaying sonic fragments into shuffling, uneasy musical statements. Dead drumbeats smack tightly, while vocal tracks are spliced, sliced, and diced until they sound like power tools.
Based on rating 7/10
It’s not normal for an act comprised of only two people to work in such cellular, minimalist musical constraints. Usually, the tendency is to focus on instrumental intricacy and telepathic musicianship (Lightning Bolt), or just on creating an impressive noise for two people (the White Stripes). Where the Berg Sans Nipple differ is in their seeming favour for bare sounds and effective rhythmic cells with occasional flourishes rather than anything more complex.
Based on rating 3/5
The ’erb must’ve been strong when [b]The Berg Sans Nipple[/b] concocted up that god-awful name. However, shit sixth-form art student band-titling aside, there’s actually a lot to take from the French-American duo’s debut LP. [b]‘Dead Dinosaurs Rule The Earth’[/b] comes up like [a]Animal Collective[/a] using toy instruments, while [b]‘Weatherman’[/b] juts along like a skipping [a]Yeasayer[/a] track, pop sensibilities rattled and disorientated.
Based on rating 6/10
The Berg Sans Nipple sing, shuffle, and splice their way through Build with Erosion, the band’s third collection of unhinged dance music. Like the albums before it, Erosion is a depository for the duo’s varied interests in electronica, dub, hip-hop, Afro-beat, and minimalist world music. Keyboard hooks are poked and prodded until they hardly resemble their source material, and they’re looped against a backdrop of samples and skittering percussion.
Based on rating 3/5
Four years have passed since The Berg Sans Nipple first caught our eye with Along the Quai, with only a lonely EP to tide us over in all that time. While the intervening years have done little to make their band name any less terrible, it has apparently afforded the Franco-American duo with an opportunity to rethink their approach to their craft. The album’s press release boasts of a more incremental song writing process (necessitated, in part, by the fact that members Lori Sean Berg and Shane Aspegren currently reside on separate continents), with the two men exchanging song fragments and spending months tinkering with them.
'Build with Erosion'
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