XINLISUPREME - Tomorrow Never Comes

Yasumi Okano (25) and Takayuki Souji (27) have just released the most puzzling and intriguing records in recent years. The duo emerged at the end of last year with the 7” teaser All You Need Is Love Was Not True. Tomorrow Never Comes, released through Fat Cat’s offshoot label Splinter Series, promises to tear apart both the rock establishment and the padded confinements of IDM.
Intense, atmospheric, violent, and disturbing, Tomorrow Never Comes is all of this at once. Xinlisupreme’s guitar-based soundtracks are unconventional by all means. Imagine My Bloody Valentine taking on death metal, imagine Sigur Rós in the middle of a nervous breakdown, imagine Kid606 throwing his machines out of his pram, and you are still not anywhere near ready for what Xinlisupreme have laid down on tapes. Behind the maelstrom of raw guitar feedback tearing up sequenced loops and found sounds, the duo creates an authentically unique universe. Rarely a record has reached such uncompromising perversion. Ranging from sheer aggression (Kyoro) to schizophrenic chaos (Goodbye For All) and from hallucinogenic dream pop (All You Need Is Love Was Not True and the absolutely sublime Fatal Sisters Opened Umbrella) to arid minimalism (Nameless Song), Xinlisupreme’s deconstructed soundscapes transcend the very meaning of musical forms to depict an apocalyptic vision of sound through impressive layers of noise and scarce basic beat structures. At times, the pair swap their mutant frivolity for more conform atmospheres, where intricate structures are exposed more clearly (Suzu, You Died In The Sea) and even reveal some almost intelligible words (Amaryllis), but this never lasts for long, and the band soon return to their enormous sound with delight. But, despite the noise-ism and the violence displayed, Tomorrow Never Comes remains before all an intensely atmospheric records, of the sort that requires to be listened to from the first to the last measure to capture the essence of its nature. If the twelve tracks exhibit strong elements of individuality, they work best in the context of the entire work, as they seem to gain strength and power from each other.
Xinlisupreme have created with Tomorrow Never Comes a truly magnificent record, fuelled by its own perverse abstraction and complexity. Impressive in many respects, this album is above all persistently beautiful and utterly dramatic.