STYROFOAM WINOS · THE SPATULAS · THE COUNTRYS

Spatula is an eclectic Chapel Hill, North Carolina trio whose members wend their ways through an incredibly wide variety of material -- some of it hectic and helter-skelter, some of it cool and composed -- often in the course of a single song. Their primarily instrumental experimental rock sound seems to be one of a group struck dumb by the emptiness of today's sprawling postindustrial, megalopolitan landscape, capable only of squeezing brooding, disjointed musical patterns and shapes from their instruments. The band started out back in 1993 with a split seven-inch that came inside a copy of Stay Free! magazine. They added a second in 1994 for the then Durham-based The New Sound label. Since those modest beginnings they've continued to expand on their sound through the course of two records on the Jesus Christ labels.