It’s a difficult LP to describe really. An absolute whirl of interlocking sounds textures and tempos, you could be mistaken for thinking that the master tape got warped in the sun.
It’s a difficult LP to describe really. An absolute whirl of interlocking sounds textures and tempos, you could be mistaken for thinking that the master tape got warped in the sun.
Party? Party?? They are having a laugh, pal. Play this at a party and prepare to spend 6 months on bail. A stew of strange sounds and rhythms, veering queasily and myopically between every sort of daft time signature in the book, this is a very odd and lonely creation. There’s little like it that I can think of and trying to draw too many comparisons will make me sound like an absolute wanker… Jazz, post rock, math rock, plain daft rock, giddy with the realisation that it’s been left alone to create havoc, Party Feel is like leaving a four year old kid alone with a bag of flour and jam in your living room. This is what happens when Captain Beefheart gets into the wrong hands. It’s damned thick stuff as George, the Prince of Wales once said of Sir Edmund Gibbon’s history books.
Party Feel is, frankly, brain frying stuff. I shouldn’t be surprised really as one of the band is from Super Adventure Club, who aren’t exactly founder members of the Stereophonics fan club.
It’s a difficult LP to describe really. An absolute whirl of interlocking sounds textures and tempos, you could be mistaken for thinking that the master tape got warped in the sun. The opener It’s Good But It’s Not Right is a sort iron fist in a velvet glove: as things get weirder from here on in. I suppose this track is a bit like Church of Anthrax probably because of the atonal, groovy elements. Second track, Dustin Binman, gets hold of math rock’s worst excesses (those bloody chiming, clean guitar notes) and tries to pass them off as a sort of free jazz-rock before deciding that Alex Harvey has to be summoned from the grave to take the thing out to grass. Brad Shitt is one of those pieces of music that haunt your dreams without you ever being able to define it, the aural equivalent of the emotional turmoil wreaked by an unplanned weekend at a doo whop festival, or spending the weekend in Bedford. It just keeps frying senses. Sexy Grandad could be The Soft Boys in their Can of Bees phase trying to tackle a Calypso track. Last up is a “rock opera” of sorts: Under A Glass Table is a mesh of rhythm and tempo ever more confusing and spaceward. Akin to what Syd Barrett would have done if he’d hung out with someone bloody annoying like John Otway or Todd Rundgren in his fucked up years.
Is it done? I’m whacked. Don’t play this at a party, please.
Look I know it’s actually very good, and a sort of addiction is very possible on repeated listen – but it’s not recommended in company: especially if you like hanging out with other people. And, like deciphering the Rosetta stone, (something I’m still busy with), it could take some time. Savvy?