Finally. Finally I have the debut album from DD/MM/YYYY. It seems like an age since ‘Digital Haircut’ surfaced online and sent my headphones into disrepair. It was frantic, schizophrenic and completely addictive. I wanted more.

Black Square is the debut album from the Toronto five piece. You pronounce their name as day, month, year. It’s less confusing than it looks, which is kind of the opposite of this record. You see the description; math rock, art, noise, punk, and you can kind of guess what’s coming next. And that’s when the power punch of album opener ‘Bronzage’ hits. Certainly, it takes in every one of those genres, but it does so in five-second spurts.

This is one of the most dynamic records I’ve had the pleasure of listening to in a while. Everything has been thought through, from the way songs melt into each other to the pace with which they fall and explode and fade again. It’s like someone took Q and Not U into a room and played them Mr. Bungle. Occasionally it meanders off into a lounge heavy breakdown before another set of looping, screeching vocals pull it back with a guzzling synth tone that makes me miss So So Modern.

One thing that really struck me when I saw DD/MM/YYYY live, and I think they’ve carried well onto the album, is the bands creative use of percussion. This really feels like an album that’s carried by rhythm, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. It’s just that if I pay too much attention to what’s actually going on I finish the record exhausted.

Black Square demands attention, and deserves it too. Because hidden back there, behind that wall of ever-changing ideas, are some subtleties that make me smile, hit rewind, and be glad that it’s finally in my record collection.