Time Expired

by Karate

Overview

Boston trio Karate began incorporating new ideas into their intricately constructed post-hardcore style on their third album, 1998's The Bed Is in the Ocean. Starting there, the band began weaving complex jazz guitar soloing and more advanced compositional ideas into their slow-paced, introspective emo rock, landing on a sound not explored by too many of their peers. Time Expired collects Karate's output from the time of their 2000 album Unsolved to their initial breakup in 2005 after releasing their final album, Pockets, the year before. It's a definitive look at the phase when the group all but extracted any hints of punk from their sound, leaning instead into straightforward jazz structures and chord progressions on tunes like Unsolved's "The Lived-But-Yet-Named," experiments with space and formlessness on Some Boots tracks like "South" in 2002, and even extended improvisations and experiments with sound processing on the lengthy tracks from their 2001 EP Cancel/Sing. Instead of just assimilating these musical ideas, Karate truly built on them, with singer/guitarist/songwriter Geoff Farina's pensive vocals and sometimes abstract, sometimes emotionally bare songwriting always at the core of even the band's most stylistically unmoored songs. Time Expired collects Unsolved, Cancel/Sing, Some Boots, and Pockets, and also includes previously unreleased rehearsal tapes from around the time of Unsolved. The extremely lo-fi rehearsal recordings are perhaps the most telling artifact of the entire collection, capturing the band in a moment of uninhibited jamming and giving a sense of how far out their ideas could get before being reined back in during the recording process. Absorbing the entirety of Karate's second phase presented here (relegating The Bed Is in the Ocean to more of a transitional document) illuminates just how far outside the indie rock trends of their day the band was. ~ Fred Thomas

Product Details

Release Date:	11/25/2022
Label:	Numero / Numero Group
UPC:	0825764115216
Rank:	66984

Tracks

Disc 1

1. Small Fires
2. The Lived-But-Yet-Named
3. Sever
4. The Roots and the Ruins
5. Number Six
6. One Less Blues
7. The Halo of the Strange
8. The Angels Just Have to Show
9. This Day Next Year
10. Get Reborn [Rehearsal]
11. Old Codes [Rehearsal]
12. The Angels Just Have to Show [Rehearsal]

Disc 2

13. Cancel
14. Sing

Disc 3

15. Original Spies
16. First Release
17. Ice or Ground?
18. Remain Relaxed
19. In Hundreds
20. Airport
21. Baby Teeth
22. South

Disc 4

23. With Age
24. Water
25. The State I'm in Aka "Goode Buy From Cobbs Creek Park"
26. Cacophony
27. Alingual
28. Tow Truck
29. Pines
30. Concrete

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Karate   Primary Artist
Gavin McCarthy   Drums
Geoff Farina   Guitar,Vocals
Jeff Goddard   Bass
Chris Brokaw   Guitar

Technical Credits

Andy Hong   Mixing
Gavin McCarthy   Arranger,Composer
Geoff Farina   Design,Arranger,Composer
Jeff Goddard   Arranger,Composer
Jeff Lipton   Mastering,Remastering
Karate   Mixing
Henry Owings   Design
Jon Resh   Design
Jonathan Lukens   Design
Riley Manion   Project Coordinator
Pammela Rojas   Cover Art