Wreck and Reference

Absolute Still Life is the fourth full-length album by the experimental duo Wreck and Reference. The album marks a radical departure from the band’s heavy and noise rock origins and finds them driving toward a more electronic and abstract dimension. Like past albums, warped synthesizers and pillaged samples build up the harmonic elements of the songs, but the absence of acoustic drums gives Absolute Still Life a colder, more alien aesthetic. With fewer screams and stranger textures than before, Wreck and Reference find themselves alone again in uncharted and uncategorizable territory.
To date, Wreck and Reference have released four EPs and three full-length albums. Their first work, an EP titled Black Cassette, showcased distorted fragments and synthesizers in angular, heavy songs, with themes of determinism and Cormac McCarthy-esque isolation. Their debut full-length Y̶o̶u̶t̶h̶ (2012) and their sophomore release Want (2014), described by Pitchfork as having “radical vision” and “boundless experimentation,” represented dramatic expansions of their sonic palette. In 2016, Wreck and Reference released their third LP, Indifferent Rivers Romance End, perfecting their song craft and pushing their noisy, sample-based instrumentation to its limits.
Despite once being a solitary project, Wreck and Reference have done several collaborations with other experimental artists including Ricky Eat Acid on See You Soon (2016) and photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, performing during his installation at the Tate Modern museum in London and producing a techno track for his Heute Will Ich Frei Sein EP (2018). Recently, Wreck and Reference have contributed a track to the How To Dress Well remix album One Train Hides Another (2019).