Marc Edwards & Slipstream Time Travel, Mystic Mountain: Trouble in the Carina Nebula

Here we have an EP of great electricity, improvisational strength, and the uninhibited free mayhem of the spacey, special sort we have come to expect from drummer-bandleader Marc Edwards and his Slipstream Time Travel band. The album is titled Mystic Mountain: Trouble in the Carina Nebula (JaZt TAPES CD-057). It was the band as it sounded live at The Pine Box in Brooklyn, last October 2015.

There is a mountain of sound to be heard here, perhaps the density of which at times is unprecedented. Marc of course occupies the drum chair and gives us his unparalleled, tempestuous virtuoso barrage of percussive significance. David Tamura adds a welcome and contrastively volcanic tenor sax. But then the threesome of Karl Alfonso Evangelista, Colin Sanderson and Alex Lozupone, the three on very high-crank electric guitars, Alex (who also is leader of the band Eighty-Pound Pug that I have happily covered here) on combo electric guitar and bass.

The three guitar onslaught creates extreme metal densities of a special, invigorating sort. What a sound they get. Marc and David are determined to create counterthrusts of sound and they do so nicely, but the guitars make for a highly psychedelic sort of present-day Ascension that floats and drives the music into a beautiful chaos like no other. This may be their most anarchically exhilarating album yet! And if you let yourself open to its insistence, I think you will find it drives you outward into a space that is infinitely over-the-top.

So, kudos! If you seek something polite, this one is not for you. But if a very electric freedom can motor your listening self, this one is tailor-made for such a trip. It's a great noise indeed!

For more info and to find out how to order this go to http://www.janstrom.se/7.-jazt-tapes-15468036

The Spanish Donkey, "XYX", Joe Morris, Jamie Saft, and Mike Pride

There are organ trios who do what you'd expect in some kind of Jimmie Smith mode. Then there is the Spanish Donkey and their XYX (Northern Spy 009), which is NOT your ordinary trio! It's Joe Morris on guitar, Jamie Saft on keys (and bass guitar) and Mike Pride on drums. What they play is some very engaging super-outside music. If you know Joe Morris's guitar work, you will not be surprised. Yet this is trio freedom with a very thickly textured electronic noise element that goes beyond what Joe usually does. Jamie Saft gets all manner of sound clusters and noisy sustains on the synth keys, Mike Pride plays out of time hefty drums and Joe Morris turns in some of his best work ever. The backdrop that the Spanish Donkey provides seems to stimulate him into an admirable frenzy of note clusters, bends and electric skronk-shreds that get pretty wild.

This is a group effort however--and so the total sound is always an out-front thing. It's heavy music, thick-textured free psychedelics and it is something that once you put it on, you cannot ignore. It will be heard! You either surrender to their web of sounds or you play something else. And really, isn't that the true purpose of getting music for your world? There's no half-heard cocktail party backdrop function that would work for XYX!

What it is is a flat-out blast of fire. It's wonderfully envigorating, like an abrupt dip into an icy stream after several hours in an Indian Sweat House.

Nab this album and you'll be getting a passport to the outer realms of noise-space. Some of the most extreme, but also some of the very best sort of outness!