Well it qualifies for the strangest band name of 2024, for sure.
Not being much of a film buff I had to do a bit of Googling to discover that The 5 Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique is a fictional martial arts technique that featured in Kill Bill: Vol. 2., and that’s well, unusual to say the least.
And it’s even more unusual when you realise that one half of the “DIY instrumental” as they call themselves duo is Arne Kjelsrud Mathisen, who has been here numerous times in his Rural Tapes guise. A quiet looking bloke, a multi-instrumentalist with the air of a librarian, and who has a thing about old analogue tape machines. He is the last person you’d expect to find grappling with Uma Thurman, if you’ll pardon the expression.
The other half incidentally is Lars Løberg Tofte, who also plays bass on Rural Tapes tracks. Here he plays bass and keys while Arne plays keys and drums.
They grew up together in the coastal town of Lillesand in southern Norway, and have played together in different bands for 25 years, racking up more than 80 releases over the last 15 years.
Apart from a piece of meetings scheduling software, ‘Indico,’ a word with multiple roots,means ‘evidence’ or ‘clues’, and from that interpretation alone the song could be used as a soundtrack for a Colombo episode, if they were still making them.
‘Indico’ to me at least marks a departure from Rural Tapes’ stylisation, having more ‘form’ to it.
It’s quite hypnotic, with at least four contrasting and highly syncopated themes running through it courtesy of keyboards, bass and drums (both of which actually play tunes) until it reaches an outro which reminds me of those ‘relax and unwind’ music channels you used to be able to select on an overnight flight, pretending you were on a Caribbean beach.
‘Indico’ might become one of those, but something tells me it’s more likely to feature on the next Tarantino film.
‘Indico’ was released on October 11th and the album ‘In Transit’ follows on October 25th.
Find them on:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/5.palmexplodinghearttechnique/
(Arne Mathisen/Rural Tapes) –
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ruraltapes
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rural_tapes/
(By the way, don’t get them mixed up with a Texas punk band of the same name).
