The hardest part about painting someone’s portrait is not trying to attain a perfect  likeness of the sitter – it’s knowing when to stop adding more paint.

It turns out that The Modus Torn broached the same issue, albeit with sound, not something squeezed out of a tube.

Suddenly has an entirely ill-fitting title – slowly uncoiling mumbled sounds from a different time, a different place.

There’s something half-finished or half-missing about this track, and this vagueness is not a flaw – it’s actually the song’s greatest strength.

An almost out-of-sync guitar line, and lyrics that may or may not be there at all, seep gently into one another. It’s a song that teeters precipitously on the edge of uselessness, but doesn’t fall.

The Modus Torn stopped at exactly the right moment. It might have been a mistake, it might have been deliberate. But it worked.

NB: There are no pictures of The Modus Torn anywhere. Above is a picture of the Renault Modus. Close enough.

MORE: soundcloud.com/modus-torn