Freedom of Speed

The Junior Communist Club is the nearly precious moniker for the soundtrack-like musical explorations of Space 67 (aka John Dragonetti of the indie guitar rock outfit Jack Drag) and Master Cylinder (aka Pete Ducharme). Seems these two Boston recording artists have a knack for reworking each other's material — Dragonetti providing the raw melodic material and Ducharme manipulating it into all sorts of loopy forms. The duo worked its magic to great effect in the late '90s producing the rhythmic soundtrack to a memorable VW commercial in which a couple drives through the streets of New Orleans with the windshield wipers keeping time with the action on the streets (basketballs bouncing, crates being unloaded from a truck, etc.). The Junior Communist Club's Freedom of Sound EP works the same atmospheric lo-fi (that is, homemade-sounding) electro territory. Each of the cuts here could easily provide the soundtrack to a movie waiting to be filmed, and that's both the charm and the limitation of the material. The opening cut — the seven-minute "Ultrabollywood" — is a rolling landscape populated by eerie/cheesy analog synthesizer sounds, jabs of looped guitar, and a bubbly bassline, all layered in such a way as to suggest the rhythm of the dashes down the center of the road blipping by. "Tidal Wave" is a standard-if-jittery post-rock track. "Ultrasound" is a schizophrenic mess of homemade analog keyboard rock & roll and throw-your-hands-in-the-air-worthy choruses strapped onto segments of quiet electronic background noise where the verses would be. Half the fun of the Freedom of Speed EP is imagining what cliché movie scenes would go with the sounds Dragonetti and Ducharme concoct. If that was their intent, they've succeeded wildly in creating a completely inoffensive, ephemeral work of retro-looking, homemade electro rock.