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