Dot Legacy is a band which teases and taunts the need for the music industry to label and pigeonhole bands. They flaunt their striking ability and inventiveness in fusing a wealth of styles and flavours into their own unique and virtually indescribable adventure. The evidence is all there on their striking self-titled debut album, a release which ebbs and flows a little in success but never relinquishes its compelling potency at creating something extraordinary for the imagination and emotions to play with.
Hailing from Paris, Dot Legacy sculpts a web of sound which expands from a canvas of stoner, noise, and post rock footing; pulling everything and anything into its kaleidoscope of enterprise. Within tracks you can find yourself striding down one avenue of aural scenery and with a swift twist of a chord or rhythmic shuffle, enter another distinctly different yet complimentary terrain of endeavour. Formed in 2009, the band has earned a strong reputation for their eclectic and intriguing propositions, which their full-length has already begun pushing towards a much wider attention.
Opening track Kennedy opens on a charming invitation of guitar swiftly joined by a darker but no less coaxing bass presence. Just as quickly again it all erupts into a surge of noise baited and discord kissed enterprise, that small moment in the album alone bringing strong hints of the unpredictability and intriguing magnetism to come from sound and release. The track is a superb and respectful cacophony of invention and sonic exploration, the guitars of John Defontaine and Arnaud Merckling as enchanting as they are ferocious, with the latter’s keys skills just as mesmeric across the album. Basking in a sultry climate with rhythmic and riff clad turbulence, the track continues to enthral as the lead vocals of bassist Damien Quintard backed feistily by the rest of the band, add further incendiary expression.
The great start is immediately surpassed by Think Of A Name, its opening enticement a blaze of stoner seeded rock ‘n’ roll with raw overtones of psychedelic fuzziness and sonic intensity. The heavy throaty tones of Quintard’s bass seduce 
and intimidate simultaneously as the rest of the band squall impressively around it like a wind flushed fire. Imagine At The Drive It and Fall Of Troy in league with Torche and Melvins to come somewhere near the glory of the persistently evolving track.
Days Of The Week is equally as impressive and exhilarating. An initial tempest of sonic and melodic acidity entwined around a raw energy entices ears before flowing into an outstanding mellow embrace of evocative textures and vocal harmonies over expressive enterprise. A technical flair seizes its chance to shine during the smouldering beauty of the song, whilst vocals across the whole band simply tantalise and seduce to equal effect and success. The Mai Shi comes to mind occasionally during the track but again it is a unique encounter belonging only to the band. Its finale leads seamlessly into The Passage; a track which plays like its title suggests and links its predecessor and the following proposition with a tunnel of noise veined by hints of melodic expression and imposing emotion. It is an ok track but pales sharply between the previous song and the excellent Pyramid, a track which ventures into a hip hop area vocally and nu-metal seeding musically, playing like The Kennedy Soundtrack meets Limp Bizkit but with a wealth of riveting twists and additives to create another individual and scintillating offering.
The lengthy adventures of Gorilla Train Station and Rumbera bring further twists to the landscape of the release, the first a scuzz draped stroll of heavy sludge spawned riffs and similarly imposing rhythms but prone to graceful drifts into stoner bred melodies and sultry vocal persuasion. The second is an avant-garde dance of vocal and melodic flirtation, equipped with a Latin temperament, within a contagious maelstrom of thick rock endeavour courted by provocative keys. As with all tracks and their individual characters, it is hard to portray all that is going on within its walls but arguably this song is the most intrigue lit and bewilderingly addictive of them all.
The Midnight Weirdos provides almost nine minutes of dark drama, the constantly impressing craft of drummer Romain Mottier alone setting the imagination off on a sinister journey towards the jazz and funk coloured slow prowl of the song. It is an engrossing and voraciously bewitching track with heavy metal and blues just a couple of the other tendrils of sound helping sculpt the absorbing incitement.
The album closes with 3 am, an acoustic croon of voice and guitar which feels like an anti-climax to the tempestuous triumphs at first but emerges as a fine serenade to bring the exhausting emprise of the album to a gentle end. To describe Dot Legacy’s sound is like trying to discover the core colour of a rainbow, a similarity in their perpetual blending of senses bewitching hues possibly the best way to bring some reference to the creativity of the French band. Some of the tracks are a little too long and surprisingly there at times is surface familiarity between a few songs but beneath each is a whirlpool of blistering and thoroughly compelling ideation providing an irresistible web of temptation.
Dot Legacy is available digitally and on CD via Setalight Records and @ http://dotlegacy.bandcamp.com/
9/10
RingMaster 11/09/2014
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