Red Giant
Ultra-Magnetic Glowing Sound (MIA)
by Craig Regala
It’s been about a half decade since the last Red Giant disc, and this one, Ultra Glowing Magnetic Sound, finds them working their “space punk” into a more cohesive, wilder, catchier zoom through matter vs. antimatter. These guys upratchet a cool, full-on territory that (upon its inception) got labeled as part of acid rock. Mainly, it’s when the effect-pedal technology met up with the desire to play exploratory music unfettered by goofus dingle pop prerogatives. Akin to jam bands, these guys like to get out there. This kinda leaves the “punk” part of their early self-description on the shelf, but if you take the punk part to mean a visceral attack and the desire to ignore the structures and niceties of rock radio’s hardened arteries thus busting nerves and releasing both mind and body: shit, right on, huh?
Wouldn’t you know it, just as this disc surfaced, a bunch of other like-minded, thought-not-samey units started to float into the culture-at-large view. Units like Core and Solarized, bands that get tagged “desert” or “stoner,” and even the commercial breakthrough band of this loosely knit “scene,” those Captain Beyond/Hawkwind/Black Flag/Sir Lord Baltimore fans, Monster Magnet. What influences Red Giant, I dunno, that’s a particular peeve of mine anyway – it’s so easy to state a few bands and declare that those in review have been influenced by ’em. I mean, I throw names around as references, but fuck… I never interviewed these guys, and even when they mention bands, it’s hard to know what particular facet or tangent of the musical language they picked from. Who knows? So I’ll pitch some names… The vocal tone and how it hooks up with the riffs is reminiscent of Fu Manchu/Nebula, the structural width could go back to Hawkwind’s Space Ritual, the German’s Guru Guru, up through Helios Creed, Rush’s prog moves on 2112 and Hemispheres, and OK, the earliest stuff too, and to later Voivod. The hammerdown and general feel bump into bands that moved from certain hardcore and metal lineages to “math rock,” and whatever you wanna call those bands on Revelation, the Iceburn Collective for one, that wanted to keep the purity of playing high-impact music and yank its structure thru free jazz, early Sabbath, 20th Century classical, and good ol’ guitar gymnastics. Also, Red Giant’s label has other distinct, good-to-great bands whose geographic proximity gives them a confederation of sorts; Craw, Disengage, Biblical Proof of UFOs, and The Duvalby Bros. are all in town (Cleveland), as is Boulder who, as far as anyone knows, exist to prove just how fucking much punk-ass retard grit you can get from ’80s metal. Certainly a much more valuable move than ripping off dance music or Korn-hop to our rock culture. I dig Ultra Glowing Magnetic Sound, and I think a bunch of y’all might too. I play this for guys I know who really dig Tool, and about half of ’em have cuddled up to this. Neat, huh?
(www.mia-records.com)
