Girls on Dates

IQU's Girls on Dates EP is a frightening mix of squealing low-fi electronics and broken verbal communication. Complimenting IQU's explosive haze is a hilarious and chilling spoken-word performance by punk poet and filmmaker Miranda July. Though there are only four tracks on the record (the last two tracks are remixes of the first two songs), IQU weave an interesting plot of miscommunication and language reformation with their crunchy electro beats, live upright bass, and July's flat-out spoken weirdness. On the title track, July provides the voices of multiple characters as a pushy female investigator attempts to solve a homicide -- her only lead being a ditzy young woman who can't pronounce her own last name. IQU build a mood of creepiness and tension around the one-woman dialogue as the suspect goes insane in this amazing musical study of semantics. In the other track, July portrays two respite givers trying to communicate with an invalid woman by devising a series of response signals. July's startling imagination becomes that much more present in the monologue as she tells the disabled woman 'If you know that I'm here, I want you to stop breathing.' IQU have a definite knack for tone as Michiko Swiggs, K.O., Aaron Hartman, and July create an unsettling and opaque wall of drum, bass, and synthetic madness. A wonderfully provocative collaboration.