Gipping Through the Ages

Germ Lattice are a difficult group to define. The UK trio from Norwich don’t belong to any particular local scene and don’t have many similar contemporaries. The nearest neighbors, to my ears, are post-punk groups like This Heat anti-rockers like The Shadow Ring that are separated by decades. The building blocks are basic — bass, synth, and huge booming percussion — but what makes Germ Lattice unique is how their music seems to unravel before it fully comes together, like a mass of fabric being braided on one end while it’s yanked apart from the other. Melodic phrases are offered up and snatched away, vocals unintelligibly slurred, and rhythms pounded out in unreliable measures. It almost sounds like a band stuck in an endless soundcheck, testing the tolerance of their setup as well as your patience.