There is something diabolical brewing up North. It seems that every time I hear a release is coming out of or near Newcastle here in England, you can expect it to be seriously warped. Like black pitch, A Field In England warped. Where everything is in monochrome, is melting out of the frame, slowed down and sped up in all the wrong/right places. At the epicentre of such alchemical bastardisations is Box Records. Their compilation from earlier this year, Vol. 1, included bludgeoning drawn out brutality (Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, Khunnt), schizophrenic noise (Foot Hair, Luminous Bodies, Beauty Pageant) and SM faves such as the psych daemons Gnod, warped bedroom warrior Waskerley Way and the inimitable anti-folk soothsayer Richard Dawson.
One of my favourite tracks to come off the compilation though was from Blown Out, whose album Jet Black Hallucinations (also out on Box Records) is a three-course degustation of drawn-out, drawled, dank and dark psychedelic r'n'r. Gorge yourself on the kinetic ferocity of the title track, which you think would sate your hunger. But no - when those seventeen minutes are up, along comes 'Transgalactic World Eater', a full-bore funereal dirge into the bowels of the outer reaches of space, the clarity of its brutality measured through sustained speed and propulsion. But then you come to the final act, the "brief" nine-minute 'Ultrawave Communications', a track that seems to take it down a notch yet is just as unrelenting as what has come before. Feed off the hypnotic teat and rejoice - THIS is what psych rock is all about.
Buy Jet Black Hallucinations here - STAT.
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