Artifact Shore

The music of Minneapolis Artifact Shore evokes bleak post-apocalyptic landscapes, and ranges from industrial, frenetic rage to a meticulously layered melancholy. The band is alternatively reminiscent of stalwarts like Joy Division and Sonic Youth, with equal doses of early Big Black, the British shoegazer movement, and the more beat-oriented noise of Merzbow. That it all holds together while constantly threatening to break apart is an apt description of Artifact Shore's aesthetic outlook.
The band began playing together in earnest in 2005, when its core members, who hail from a range of musical backgrounds, began honing their severe sound using a mix of traditional rock instrumentation with electronic sources. Since then the band has performed in clubs, galleries, and theatres in Minneapolis, New York, and elsewhere, and is beginning to earn a reputation for a sonically punishing stage presence.
"Standout track "2 in 24" rips and rolls open this EP from Minneapolis based group Artifact Shore. The elements are simple but effective: slashed guitars, chorused vocals and robust electronic interventions placed with enough care to prevent songs becoming too predictably song-like. The mid-paced title track dwells in the same twilight world of broken melody and restrained vocals as Sonic Youth. The even slower "Insight and Action" is somnambulant and festers with malign intent, while the high-plucked bass and heavily echoed vocals of "Stupid Coma" distinctly recall Joy Division. Closer "On the Banks of Black" is a monochrome dirge more at home in the mill buildings of Manchester than Minneapolis. While the influences may be out in the open, Artifact Shore handle them with deft confidence and make them their own, and Fun Is Near an assured release."
-Nick Southgate
"As near as I can tell, this is a reissue of an out of print CD shared by these two groups, one of whom is from Minneapolis, the other of whom I've had trouble tracking (but they feel midwestern). Bravo Team actually sound like a decent variation on the standard rabid-foam guitar groups of the Ruthless/Am Rep era, which is something I miss more than I can easily explain. Suffice to say they have a certaiin amount of Killing Joke cunning and a lot of screech around their edges. Artifact Shore are a little tougher to grasp. Their moves are closer to those of their conemporaries in the Michigan noise underground, but they're nowhere near as harsh as most of those proponents. They pile it up and pile it on, sure, but there's a sinuousness inside the structures that seems almost psychedelic. Mmmm."
-Bryon Colley
"This Minneapolis four don't give critics much to do. They honestly list as influences Joy Division, shoegazers like Ride, Sonic Youth, Big Black, The Fall, ect. Writers get used to dubious, off-base assertions; but this EP is those bands in a blender to a "t"! Considering how far afield the aforementioned five are, it makes Artifact Shore so peculiar. The icy-silence wave of Factory records hits the shore of heavily reverbed dreampop plus avant garde noise-art and ends up spewing up a grinding industrial post-punk spray! Now, no track is the same, so permutations seem to shift from track to track in equal measure: like the eerie Sonic Youth of "Insight & Action" giving way to the drum machine claustrophobia of Ian Curtis and A Certain Ratio, with Big Black's Dave Riley-like fuzztone basslines on "Stupid Coma". Endlessly unusual, endlessly surprising."
- Jack Rabid
"Minneapolis' avant-garde quartet Artifact Shore offers up a solid, self-titled instrumental EP on Interference Shift that opens with seven minutes of pitter-patter thumps and laser synths akin to early Autechre. Elsewhere, it gets no happier but the group at least starts to use guitars, and should be recommended for its new-wave ethos alone. Those Minnesota winters can be tough."
- Martin De Leon
"An early instrumental EP on Interference Shift, 'Artifact Shore' offers a glimpse into the earlier stages of Artifact Shore's development on a label which has carved out a deserved niche delivering multi-edition, multi-media works of real beauty. Interference Shift state that they "hope to create lasting popular culture artifacts" and with this and other releases they make good on their promises. Four hypnotic tracks couple motorik rhythms with surface tapestries that shimmer and sheen, sparkling and atmospheric. 'Version 1' opens with elastic rhythms grafted onto energetic and metronomic undercurrents, its persistent and weighty undertow recalling Mogwai's relentless rhythms. 'Regional Winter', the closing track, opens with foreboding rhythms, firm and insistent before unravelling a delicate surface guitar melody edged with careful electronics. A tightly wrapped package. Packaged beautifully with minimal, blind debossed artwork by Interference - whose elegant limited edition bookworks are equally compelling - 'Artifact Shore' is a rare combination: audio/visual gestalt."
- NB