Now

Crescent are a Bristol-based group, peers with Movietone and flying saucer attack, led by Matt Jones. Their first two singles for author Richard King’s Planet Records, “360°” and “Sun,” suggested rock music dislocated from its core; the latter single heads up the Crescent’s debut album, Now. It’s also one of the album’s highlights, a coruscating blast, guitars like an avalanche. More often, though, tension wins out – even when spiralling into whirlpools of distortion, like at the end of “Song,” Crescent’s noise is perpetually near to boiling point. In some ways, the layers of gun-metal-grey guitars recall New Zealand legends Bailter Space and High Dependency Unit; the acoustic songs and instrumental interludes are shadier, whether shuffling jazz (“Intermission”) or cracked folk (“New Sun”).