Music

If this Trondheim trio are ‘busy taking over the world’, as they claim on their website, they’ll have to rely on some serious capitulation.

By choice, much of the music-listening populous would rather listen to a kindergarten acoustic set from The Ting Tings than subject themselves to this, the most cacophonous thing we’ve heard in months.

Having boosted sales of earplugs in Norway, these self-confessed noise-rockers (a tag which a good deal of bands would feel uncomfortable with, lest they’re not noisy enough) are here to tout their eye-of-the-storm improv, as heard on new (second) album, ‘Discotheque Bitpunching’, released on Norwegian imprint Bolage.

Key to Puma’s sound is that titular invention, ‘Bitpunching’, a word describing well the trio’s grinding, ‘when computers go bad’ manipulations.

These lead us noisily in, whipping up squalls of frenzied white noise and doom metal thrashing, which sound akin to a Flymo, its blades stuck on a rock, or the spin cycle of a washing machine about to break the speed of sound.

Puma’s rhythms stutter and fall and grooves are discernable, but it’s the intensity and ambition of the trio, led by Fraud guitarist Stian Westerhus, to create a hurricane of gathering noise that ticks our box. And rest assured, with free-jazz gang Loop Collective and the noodly heads at the Vortex playing host, Puma are about ready to pounce.

Further listening: www.myspace.com/pumapumapuma