(Prophase Music)
By Craig Regala
In the last episode, I said this: “Drone stroke psych drawing heavily from the hidden, full-on ‘next’ wave of psychedelia. The stuff that started with David Thomas’ statement that ‘Pere Ubu are the second wave of psychedelia.'” Listening to this new one, I’d say, well, I was right. I’ll also say on these guys ignore the Velvet Undergrounds’ Sister Ray about as much as Can did. So to put’m at the head of a whole school of mean retro-art+dirt=grumble may be kinda careless/presumptuous, but look, I’ve eaten a month’s worth of some kid’s Ritalin over a long weekend, so I’m not totally hooked on making linear sense.
Yeah, I still place these guys as gobbling Pere Ubu’s pre-LP stuff, as well as other crude-aggo-outsider shit from the fair city of Cleveland when Carter was President: The Electric Eels, X_X, Mirrors, and joints smoked through old copies of CLE magazine. This time out, the stick’s a little more pointed and you keep expecting’m to bust into Hawkwinds’ “Silver Machine” via the Melvins version of “Intersteller Overdrive” with the delicacy of a crackhead hacking into a candy machine with a golf club. The second cut (in my Universe, this one has “hit single” written on each little brown tab) has a rumbling propulsion copped from Captain Beefheart and The Edgar Broughton Band jacked through some sorta perverted language the Fall upchucked in the glorious time before the savage jaw clamped the fuck down.
In the end, it all comes down to music, the liberating, soothing sound that makes shit OK. If sandpaper doesn’t wear off the jagged edges and disrupted surfaces of your day, stay away. For me, this stuff makes the world good for a bit. Hope to see’m some day. No reason they couldn’t float down to Columbus and play with Psychedelic Horseshit or Times New Viking. If yer gonna get zonked and lay on the floor for six or seven hours soon, play this disc along with Helios Creed, Fuzzhead, White Heaven, The Apes, Th’ Faithhealers, Fuzzface/Brother JT, and PSF’s Tokyo Flashback samplers.
(www.prophasemusic.com)