There will always be a soft spot in my heart for those crazy pop assholes The Unicorns. The antics that they used to pull, trying to break up the band while playing a song, or purposefully screwing up a live performance just because one of them had a fight with another, well it was no surprise when they broke up.
I am an embarrassingly huge fan of Jim O'Rourke's solo work, I think HALFWAY TO A THREEWAY and EUREKA are probably some of the most played records in my collection. Most will know him from his time spent in The Red Krayola, Sonic Youth and Loose Fur, but he has remained incredibly prolific outside those bands; quite literarily involved in hundreds of recordings.
Conceived as a dream concert performed by five ultra-talented, trans-dimensional musicians, this new issue from veteran UK sound-setter, Squarepusher, is full-on epiphanic, funky fresh shit. Resurrecting the direction of his classic 1998 album, MUSIC IS ROTTED ONE NOTE, JUST A SOUVENIR sees Tom Jenkinson back in live-playing territory - transcending notions of him as a bygone drill'n'bass artist via prodigious performances more aligned with Lightning Bolt or Aprodite's Child than the 'braindance' sound of old scene compadre, Aphex Twin.
Despite their reputation as coon huntin', sister marryin', mob lynchin' small-minded pricks - rednecks ain't all bad. Hell, us hipsters and gay urban males stole half our wardrobe from them.
Beyond dressin' well, those rednecks know how to ROCK. And you can hear the twang of every check flannelled, working class band from Creedence Clearwater Revival to The Band to the Doobie Brothers on DON'T BE A STRANGER, the debut from Seattle's Moondoggies.
Oh just because he kicked the bucket you thought you were free from the ass kicking you deserved from that bad muthafu-SHUT YO' MOUTH! Look, I was just talking about the man behind the legend, Isaac Hayes. Not only did he wear more bling than most rappers today could even imagine, he also played a bounty hunter preying on a man named Gator, and a cartoon elementary school chef who sung about balls.
I really don't know what to make of this album. It's kind of an angular, electronic funk affair, much like if LCD Soundsystem had slightly less sensical, more repetitive lyrics, and threw in touches of The Knife, Air, and hell, a smidge of Goodshirt to try to create a digitally-driven folk-disco record.
While many new 'psych' proclaimed acts go a path of diet dread and mind-split affectation - little further than the recent, forced drug sound of Brian Jonestown Massacre or first-listen covers of 'Sister Ray' with delay pedals - locals The Sun Blindness are tripping some truly illuminating, positive territory.
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