Figure Study by Docents

Figure Study, the debut album by Brooklyn-based band, Docents (bassist Kabir Kumar-Hardy, drummer Matthew Heaton, and guitarists and vocalists Will Scott and Noah Sider) is an album of visceral pronouncements, of viscera in crisis. It is an album that is as much about the catharsis of caterwaul as it is about the cycles that lead us there.

Known for their high energy live sets and songs which metamorphose in the blink of an eye between punk, noise, rock, and post-hardcore, Figure Study is a document of the band’s foundations. It is a product of dedication to their craft just as much as it is about the freedom to wildly experiment within their milieu.

Album opener, “Drip,” approaches like an oncoming panic attack, decrying a “will so weak” in the face of critics and censors. The pace only accelerates on “Slide,” where jagged guitars stand in for power tools, building up and tearing down an already caustic lament before seeming to settle into the deceptive dynamic shifts of “The Cold.” One of three singles for the album, “Bile” is Docents at their most focused, a song about bodily and societal cycles and the woes of what we inherit. Many sonic twists and turns later there is “Borrow from the Well” a revelatory point in the album’s closing arc where triumphant, altered guitars are juxtaposed against the narrator’s admission that “all is all for not… give in to the rot, caustic kleptic thought.” Album closer “Bits,” an early staple of the Docents live set, dissolves and distorts as the record player needle crawls wearied towards its final groove.

In the end, as with so many other moments of crisis, Figure Study leaves us wanting with little in the way of an answer - the musical chaos Docents is able to produce so deftly is instead an answer in itself. Among that disorder, Docents begin to claim their footing in the burgeoning noise rock revival in New York City.

noise from nyc. contact:

docentsband@gmail.com

Docents