SPACIN’ – ‘Deep Thuds’ LP
Debut LP from SPACIN’, the newly formed Philadelphia act that’s bringing together kick-flippers, arm-wrestlers, and hackey-sackers in head-nodding, beer swilling unity. Inhales the same fumes that fuel the Velvets workout at the gymnasium, the Stooges sleazy-fuzz with Asheton on guitar, and the groovy zen of Nigeria ’70. The first pearl bestowed upon us in the form of a side project from Philadelphia’s finest gnarled-out Psych trio Birds of Maya was guitarist Mike Polizzes’ Purling Hiss, and now we have bass player Jason Killinger with his very killer and very screwy new project, Spacin’. Originally a basement-only solo thing consisting of Killinger playing guitar through a pyramid of amps accompanied by a drum machine, Spacin’ has started to squeak itself above ground and into the barrooms of the city with a fully functioning lineup. The dude doesn’t even need the drum machine anymore; he’s got his wife Eva pounding the skins! Sneak previews of their upcoming debut full-length Deep Thuds, shows a unit who knows the economic gain to be had from a good, hypnotic riff. For those who have ever gotten lost for days in the strains of the Velvet Undergrounds’ “Sister Ray,” Jonathan Richmans’ “Roadrunner,” Hawkwinds’ “Silver Machine” or even Deep Purples’ “Space Truckin,’” repeated listening to Spacin’ is required in excessive doses. 320 copies.
KING BLOOD – ‘Vengeance, Man’ LP
RR//TT#33. Second offering from KING BLOOD & it’s a motherfucker. Throbbing, claustrophobic, triumphant, room shaking, and chiming electric guitar worship. The type of record that’ll lodge into your head & reduce your mind to a luminous toxic jelly. Enters the static void alongside Earth, Skullflower, & Les Rallizes Denudes. There are at least two ways to look at a guitar riff– as a building block for a song, or as an end in itself. Ryland Wharton, aka King Blood, has taken the latter viewpoint to a mesmerizing extreme. … he treats fuzzy guitar riffs not simply as ends, but as mantras to be chanted and monuments to be worshiped. Each track offers one simple figure devoutly repeated, as if musical nirvana is always just one more riff away…. The album drips with overload, creating a raw, gut-level immediacy. The idea behind each song is delivered unwashed and unrefined. In that sense, Eyewash Silver reminds me of Neil Young, particularly his solo guitar soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch’s 1995 existential western Dead Man. Wharton’s songs aren’t nearly as sparse or forlorn as Young’s score, but both share a near-anthropological fascination with the primal force of repeated notes. (Besides, the swinging hooks of “Poison in Jest” and “Sinfull Woman” sound extracted and extended from Crazy Horse tunes). You’ll hear other reference points throughout Eyewash Silver– the noisy wash of Japanese bands like Fushitsusha and Les Rallizes Denudes, the motor-garage of Wooden Shjips, and, on the near-perfect “End of a Primitive”, the classic amp-melt of great Velvet Underground bootlegs. But I keep coming back to Young and his exploratory wanderings, a standard to which Wharton measures up well. 320 copies.
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