THE SOUNDTRACK TO THE REVOLUTION
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It can be very difficult to get an ‘organic’ vibe going when making music with predominantly electronic ‘instruments’. Akahum have a bloody good go though and on the whole manage to pull it off. The strange thing with this album is that, depending what mood you are in, it can be different things. Sometimes it is a psychedelic rock album, sometimes it is a techno album and sometimes it is a chill out album… and sometimes it is all of those things at the same time.
‘Bang-ra’ kicks things off and, to be honest, although it has its interesting moments, it is somewhat unremarkable.... but things soon change. In steps ‘Hempi’, which starts off with a bit of an old skool ‘club dog’ chill out vibe, floating and bubbly but half way through the tempo sneakily rises without you noticing at first and some psychedelic guitar is thrown in and by the time we get to the end we have to check the machine to see if it is the same track. ‘Amber Temple’ takes you back to the chill out vibe but just as you start sinking back into the bean bag it grabs you by the scruff of the neck and shakes you into a shamanic tribal techno thing.
And that is how the bloody thing continues, lulling you into a false sense of security, letting you think you know what is going on, then transporting you to another part of the globe with no respect for the genres that us safe heads like to pigeon hole things with. The classic Ogden Nash poem ‘Last Night I Saw Upon The Stair’ is given a Middle Eastern backing track just to mess your head up for ‘Persh’. By the time we get to ‘Primarky’ you start to get your head around the fact that you need to expect the unexpected, but even then there are a few surprises in store with bits of funk and dub sneaking in, messing with your mind, then sneaking out before you have time to realise they are there. ‘Underglow’ gets really dubby, bubbling away like the water in a bong but you just know that its gonna go out with a bang and ‘Organico’ does not disappoint, getting you going like the bloke that always ends up stood by the Guarana stall at 4am; out of it, but in a natural state of mind.
By the time you get to the end you have no option but to go back to the beginning to make sure you had not dreamt it all.
Ten years and five albums in, this Brixton posse get better and better. They take their fascination for all things wild west to its natural conclusion and conjure up tails of train robberies, outlaws, gospel, six shooters and men who gotta do what a mans gotta do. Their bluesy country techno rolls out of the speakers like the sound of an acid barn dance coming from the windows of the only saloon in a ghost town. These boys aint bothered about being in fashion, which is just as well cos their sound is peerless in its originality, nothing like it has gone before no one has dared to follow in their footsteps. A concept album? Maybe, but without all the pomposity that the term normally invokes. Down to earth rock ‘n roll that does not need to throw its weight around, it just leans up against the bar sipping bourbon and you know not to fuck with it. It gets the ladies arses moving left to right and the gangsters at the back feeling alright, all night
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We here on Planet Iguana are determined to say “ hey man, have you heard, Acid Mothers Temple, they are well cool.” We are determined to like a band with a name that crazy… and no doubt we will persist in trying to like them for some time to come, and waste money on several more albums before we give up on them. But is going to be a long hard journey, because they are so damn wigged out it is unbelievable. If this were on vinyl, we would check to see if it was playing backwards. They have released a shed load of albums, with different line-ups like some dysfunctional family living in a commune on Mars, there must be something listenable out there. Our problem has recently been compounded by catching them live and discovering they are actually truly amazing on stage… but finding anything on disc to compare is hard work!
Before becoming major players on the UK underground trance/rave scene, Astralasia were a side project for members of the Magic Mushroom Band. This disc is a collection of the first two cassette only releases, originally released back in 1988/89 when they played events alongside such artists as the Shamen and Mixmaster Morris. Volume One is laid back psychedelic hippyish stuff that would have come under the banner ‘Ambient House’; more chill out lounge than dance floor. Volume two picks up the pace a bit in places but the fact that it was recorded on an 8 track and the fact that all this sort of thing was still in it’s infancy makes it sound a little dated now and a far cry from the full on techno assault that was to come from them later when they split from the mushrooms to become a proper band in their own right. There are two previously unreleased tracks on her as a bonus, rough versions of things that mutated into proper tracks that would be released later in their career. This is a good taste of how the trance scene of today was born, but would probably only be of interest to those were there. For those of you that were not there, you would be better off spending your hard earned on their later releases.
Destroycreate EP (2007)
With so many decent ‘rock’ bands around in South Wales at the moment it takes something special to stand out from the crowd. You could be original, well there is nothing spectacularly original about this lot; you could be heavier than anything that has gone before, well they aint gone down that route either; or you can just outshine everybody else with your talent. Now then…. this is where these boys stand out. Nothing too fancy, nothing pompous, nothing excessive, they have just taken a tried and tested formula of slightly metallic rock, filed off all the rough edges and polished it so you can see your face in it. It is adventurous enough to be interesting and although we have already said it is not particularly original, it has to be said they do have thier own sound and don't sound like anyone else. It is slightly understated but then they don’t need to scream and play at a million miles an hour to prove anything. You get the impression though that if they really wanted to they could be an air guitarists wet dream. Nice chunky rhythms to get you grooving with slick guitar licks over the top, complimented by vocals where you can actually understand what the vocalist is signing. Not normally our sort of thing but we would be more than happy for this to sit on our shelves.
