Compressed, self contained, and brazenly unique, each song by the Offset: Spectacles hits like a short, sharp shock. Percussive guitar and organ scrape at the surface of the left eardrum, and the bass hits like a combination of a synthesizer and a bongo. Get ready to be hectored by the ghosts of Cantonese poets and the Kowloon King. Sure as you can draw a straight line from The Offsets’ birthplace in Hong Kong to the site of their self-imposed exile in Beijing, there’s a connection between their music and the Velvet Underground, just somewhere along the 24 hour train ride things got muddled. Oscillator solos are reinterpreted for guitar, Bo Diddley blues get played drum-less, with only phantom rhythm for company. Songs like “Bodies’ Descendents” and “Snags” may bring to mind the endless empty highway, but the only possibility here is a brief sprint on an overpass above the midnight lights of a rotting port. Today, no escape is possible from a(ny) city, so the Offsets simply claim ownership, pushing back against at the neon signs, TV’s, and computers with a seductive spectacle of their own. Words by Simon Frank