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Friday Full-Length: Radio Moscow, Brain Cycles

Radio Moscow, Brain Cycles (2009)

Radio Moscow are one of those bands that it’s really easy to ignore — until you hear them. Then you spend the next couple years playing catchup and feeling like a dumbass for having missed the boat the first time around. That’s my experience with them anyway. All the way up to 2011’s third album, The Great Escape of Leslie Magnafuzz, I managed to resist, but once I caught them live, there was really no more getting around it. The classic psych-blues power trio led by guitarist/vocalist Parker Griggs was based in Iowa when they recorded their second full-length, Brain Cycles, in 2009 and released it on Alive Naturalsound, Griggs also playing drums on the record while Zack Anderson — now of Blues Pills — handled bass, but the band has since relocated to the West Coast and moved into position among the spearheads of a heavy psych revival there, alongside the likes of Earthless and Mammatus, but always keeping one foot rooted in the blues. On Brain Cycles, one can hear it perhaps easiest of all on “250 Miles,” but it’s all over the record, whether it’s opener “I Just Don’t Know,” the acoustic-led “Black Boot,” the later slide-stomping “City Lights” or the Hendrixian funk freakout of “Hold on Me.” Basically, there’s no point on the album at which it’s not caked in classic vibe, that vibe often arriving with blinding riffs, solos and rhythmic turns, as on “I Just Don’t Know,” “No Good Woman,” and so on.

I had the pleasure of seeing Radio Moscow 15-plus times last year, and I can’t honestly say there was a night that wasn’t better than the night before it. Griggs, bassist Anthony Meier and drummer Paul Marrone were out supporting the band’s fourth record, Magical Dirt (review here), which they’ve been doing more or less nonstop since before the album was actually released, playing Europe, South America and the US on a never-ending tour that seems to bounce from one continent to another only to wind up back where it started and going for another round. Air tight on stage with deadly swing, blazing guitar work and enough fuzz to fill any evening’s quota, Radio Moscow have evolved into one of the US’ finest heavy rock acts, ahead of the trend in their ’70s worship and moving faster than most of us mortals can hope to keep up with.

Hope you enjoy.

If it seems like I’m ending the week early, maybe I am, but if it makes you feel any better I plan to spend the better part of my Friday evening working anyway. I’m fortunate enough to be editing the Roadburn daily ‘zine again this year, and we’ve gotten some copy in that we’ll try to place ahead of time that needs to be formatted and gone through for grammar and whatnot, so I’m on that tonight. Well overdue, actually. Been a crazy couple weeks to say the least of it.

Speaking of, tomorrow I travel south to NYC for the EnslavedYOBWitch Mountain and Ecstatic Vision show in Manhattan. Goes without saying that I am very much looking forward to this gig. I’ll have a review up Monday, but unless a piano falls on my head sometime between now and then, I’m anticipating one of the best nights of the year.

In addition to that review, look out Monday for a track premiere from Acid King, and Tuesday for an album stream from Wake up Lucid and track premiere from Hot Lunch both. That’s right, doubling up. I’ll also have reviews of Monolord and Six Organs of Admittance hopefully before the end of next week, and I interviewed Tad Doyle of Brothers of the Sonic Cloth earlier this week, so I’m going to try to get that transcribed as well. Because, you know, not like I have anything else going on. Ha.

Oh, might also do a video premiere for Band of Spice, but it’s not 100 percent locked in yet. We’ll see.

Hope you have a great and safe weekend. If you’re hitting that show tomorrow in New York, I’ll see you there, and otherwise, I hope you’re having a blast wherever you’re at.

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