A failure to communicate saw my final two Not Not Fun write-ups for last week fail to materialise - that and some awful work-related meltdowns and the lack of Internet-inal attachment. So here they are, jammed into the one...
What I love about Ride To Die, Minneapolis band Daughters of the Sun's fourth album, is how it simultaneously feels like an extraneous entry to the Not Not Fun roster and yet an indelibly intrinsic totem. The trio are effectively a kraut-psych wet dream, filtered through the VHS gloss of early 80s Viacom cyber-sci-fi genre hybrid films. And it's this later part that comes to pass on tracks such as 'Fly By', a lysergic trance mantra that besmirches the more gargantuan psych numbers that bookend it. Don't get me wrong, the psych numbers are what get me humming here - yet even the titular 'Ride To Die', a blasted hallucinogenic bomb with its phasers set to kill, starts with warbled tetravision synth. Meanwhile 'Sater's Ghost' feels like stepping into a Kraftwerk bad dream, marionetting around a circular black hole, the strings manned by Gary Numan. And the flayed sworl of 'Reigns Of Iron' mirrors the Robedoor black drift spirit, yet with more metallurgic pulse. But it's the inexorable pull to the damned unknown that really hooks you in, and the majority of that power must go to Collin Gorman Weiland's synth wasteland. Check out his and percussionist Bennett Johnson's Dreamweapon too while you are at it. Grab Ride To Die here - it's killer.
And it's nice to end Not Not Fun week with something Australian too. Melbourne duo Legendary Hearts have just released Aerial Views, and it's a swirling hyperventilation under an cloud of opium dreams. The vapours drift effortlessly, whether it be the nebulous guitar lines on 'Vanishing Point', the waveforms that drift over the pastel sunset tones of a romantic comedown that is 'Distance & Desire' or the warped amalgamation of 80s backlit ballads and being caught in a lava lamp that percolates throughout 'Acceleration'. These narcotic inducing songs all pulse with an energy and drive that is often missing from music of this ilk: it's fun yet purposeful; sensuous yet playful. With a dash of sadism in there for that exotic taste of the wild side. Aerial Views is in fact a very sexual record in that regard, and is probably soundtracking the entire spectrum of the Kinsey scale as we speak. Grab it here.
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