I know painfully little about these Denver natives. All I know is they might be the Wild West’s answer to Brooklyn’s Oneida. The same level of ferocious energy and endless riff-age can be found in this brief yet satisfying 35 odd minutes. Make no mistake; these are some pretty strange minutes.
“Mosquito Hawk” lunges forward after a brief introduction. While those keyboards never leave, the guitars and everything else builds up higher and higher. Eventually, it just ends in a pure haze. “Rise/Set” is the sprawling gem of the group. Building up, snaking around with a bass more felt than heard, it ends on one of those sweet grooves you get after so much patience. I’m reminded a bit of the Boredoms “Super Going”. Like that song, it rewards the patience of the listener.
What makes this a pleasant listening experience are the more mellow tracks strategically placed between moments of madness. You would get exhausted listening to riff after riff. The ironically titled “Fist” and the spaced out “Tatanka Spirit” are the enjoyable bits of quiet, the ying to the previous tracks’ yang.
For such a short release, they show a lot of energy and promise. I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. They do well in the big and small ideas. Hopefully they continue to follow this path. Tjutjana are clearly ahead of the burgeoning ‘space rock’ genre that’s been so popular lately.