As usual there are no track listings, and you the listener would be best advised to approach their music as if you were attending a classical or avant garde piece.
As usual there are no track listings, and you the listener would be best advised to approach their music as if you were attending a classical or avant garde piece.
The Julie Mittens – The Red Album (Recorded Live, March 5 2003)
Ahh, the Julie Mittens, possibly Holland’s greatest group; certainly the most legendary band in the flat lands bring Incendiary their new promo LP, the Red Album. And Incendiary salivate with anticipation. After their brilliant live interpretation of poems by Marinetti and Simonetti in Leiden last month (to a crowd of bemused chianti drinking revellers who’d hoped to hear some Buxtehude or something) we couldn’t wait when we were told the album would make an appearance.
As usual there are no track listings, and you the listener would be best advised to approach their music as if you were attending a classical or avant garde piece. As in the case of their debut, the music rolls ponderously into life, the percussive elements seemingly crawling through some primaeval swamp, whilst the guitar noise screeches through a leaden sky; their closest musical cousin (certainly the closest we can think of) is Electronic Meditation era Tangerine Dream; a band similarly obsessed by elemental possibilities in electronic music; one that was also ready to indulge in brutal changes of direction and expression.
There are times when the Red Album creates an awful comotion, a true howling gale at sea, others when the approach is almost bluesy and urban. Yet again, Krautrock springs to mind, especially Ash Ra Tempel’s debut. It’s as if the Julie Mittens are trying to conjure up a white hot, elemental essence from deep within the earth’s core, such is the impact and intensity of the sound they create. All in all it’s fabulous. Extremely hard to describe, mind, but fabulous. Seek it out.