4 stars
Eclectica abounds on on this four-band snapshot compendium of
dispatches from some of the country's more gloriously, and at times
wilfully off-piste musical glories, who provide two songs apiece to
this limited edition vinyl, alongside more of the same to be downloaded
on purchase of an equally limited pack of customised beer.
Plastic Animals kick things off with 'Sheltered,' a piece of sci-fi
grunge that counterpoints urgent guitars and manic synth squiggles with
laid-back stoner vocals. On side two, the band's second piece,
'Floating,' is jauntier, leaning here to more hypnotically voguish
dream-pop stylings
Magic Eye sound beamed in from behind a shoe-gazer's fringe, so
beguilingly lovely are the swooping female vocals and echo-box filtered
guitar patterns on 'Flamin' Teenage', which leaves plenty of swoonsome
space to breathe. 'Japan' drifts off into similarly exotic waters,
guitars pinging out oriental melodies as a spooky mantra coos over what
sounds like a primitive drum-machine reconstituted for another age.
Zed Penguin's 'Wandering' is a spartan, raggedy-assed lost soul's
lament that sounds like it's been standing in a corner of CBGB'S
feeling sorry for itself for the last thirty years, biding its
melancholy time before delivering something magnificently skewed and
deliciously morose. Zed Penguin's second track, 'Heathens' is a
moodier, spookier-sounding affair, which pokes its musical finger in
your chest with a loose-knit insistence that you can't help but be
drawn into.
On Le Thug's 'New Balance', slo-mo washing-machine drones provide a
densely impressionistic backdrop for a vocal that sounds akin to one of
One Dove's quieter moments. Their second piece, 'Sense in Scotland,'
closes the record with a thirteen minute epic that frames a nursery
rhyme vocal with an increasingly dense chug that builds into a
monster-sized space rock soundscape under-pinned with little kosmiche
rhythms that pulse it towards another stratosphere. All of which makes
for a package tour in waiting that might just get messy.
The List, April 2013
ends
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