Australian jammers Apollo80 and Argentinian desert explorers Dimartis are launching a new split series for Sound Effect Records. Titled simply ‘Reverberations,’ with its first installment titled less simply, Reverberations Vol. 1 – Tales of Dust and Winds, the 38-minute long-player lays out the message of geography’s irrelevance when it comes to the heavy. Everywhere might have its own take — informed by local folk traditions or very actively not, depending on the band and situation — but if you’re on Planet Earth, heavy music is just about everywhere. In celebrating this, Sound Effect Records offer a timely reminder that human beings are the same — well timed with now two wars hot in Europe — and that creative expression and the language of music through which it’s happening here know neither gods nor borders nor walls. Whatever shape is ultimately taken, they are free-flowing. They belong to everyone.

As an art form, the split LP is very much not broken. And of all the ways one might find out about a band, it’s among the most personal of endorsements. I’ve never heard Dimartis, but I’m familiar with Apollo80. With the added boost of curation on the part of Sound Effect Records — though Ripple Music and Heavy Psych Sounds also run split series — the two bands are essentially championing each other’s work. Some splits are done for a tour; two bands getting together on a 7″ for the merch table. Some are on a theme. Sides A and B here are so dug into the spirit of the jam that the revelry itself seems to be the driving purpose. Each complements the other, and as Apollo80 set out with the multi-movement single piece “Null Arbor” (19:54) and Dimartis follow with three songs arranged together across 18:47 in “Los Altares,” “Circulos” and “Humo,” the procession is immersive and easy to lose oneself within, “Null Arbor” building to a cosmic apex over its first seven minutes or so before resolving in a big and not completely un-tense chill, gradually swelling in volume again as it moves through its midpoint and into heavier riffing after 10 minutes in.

They’re not shy about the cacophony once they get there, and Apollo80 continue to ride that crescendo for the next minute-plus before starting the comedown process that, with the guitar in the lead spot, unfolds languidly but not lazily or any more meandering than it wants to be. Just past 15 minutes in, they nestle into a swirl of wah that creates a steady current of noise to go with the heavier repetitions that finish in the fadeout, and with a side flip, Dimartis answer patience with patience in the gradual rollout of “Los Altares,” which like “Humo” to come touches on heavy post-rock, but is coming from a place more akin to desert psychedelia, as they show in each of their three inclusions at some point or other, whether it’s the instrumentalist takeoff in “Los Altares,” the heady, kind of downer roll in “Circulos” becoming a march after its midsection and a meditative heavy that echoes My Sleeping Karma at their weightiest, with just the barest edge of post-hardcore dramaturge in the riff for good measure.

“Circulos” crashes and moves into a more subdued fluidity, ending after 13:20 with silence for space between it and the closer “Humo,” which caps Reverberations Vol. 1 – Tales of Dust and Winds with shimmer and float at its beginning. Soon enough, the heavier riff enters and Dimartis carry it through to a last-minute tempo kick that’s part desert but especially emerging from the movement it does is weirder and broader than one thinks of the style’s post-Kyuss flourishing, well placed to meet the end of the record, but not necessarily a huge blowout finish so much as where they decided it was time to leave the journey in progress. You know that math theory that says every time you draw a line, that line is infinite and it just keeps going forever, even if you only drew just a teeny-tiny bit? Reverberations Vol. 1 – Tales of Dust and Winds feels like it’s still playing somewhere when it’s over, even if I can’t hear. To me, that speaks to the idea of resonance and evocation in psychedelic music, but that’s only part of the appeal here alongside the bare heft and flashes of cosmic pulse.

How well these two might’ve known each other prior to sharing space on this platter, I don’t know, but around basic commonalities of form, Dimartis and Apollo80 present individual approaches to adventurous heavy psych, each outfit with a chemistry of their own that makes the other stronger. If that’s not the ideal, I don’t know what is, and in a universe with myriad ways in which one might discover music, from social media word-of-mouth to shitheel blogs like this one to algorithmic suggestions on endless playlists, the split retains a singular presence in the spectrum of releases. I’m glad as hell I got to hear this one.

You might be too. It premieres in full on the player below. Please enjoy.

Sound Effect Records presents the release of REVERBERATIONS, a new split series with the intention of delivering bands across the planet sonically united by a musical common ground.

The first instalment, called TALES OF DUST AND WINDS sees the Western Australians APOLLO80 joining forces with the Argentinian-Patagonians DIMARTIS to take us on a trip through desertic landscapes made of winds, cold sunsets and naked rocks.

The Australians, now at the third chapter with Sound Effect Records, offer a 20-min long desert/ kosmische one-riffer cavalcade in pure Can / Neu tradition but with a heavy twist that will please the lovers of long instrumental trips. Turn the LP and you’ll find Dimartis (10 years on the scene and surprisingly at their debut on vinyl) with three tracks beautifully arranged balancing silences and reverbs that evoke the milestones of desert rock.

Really an excellent concept aiming to take us travelling through the Australian bush and the Patagonian flats with two bands that squeezed all their local authenticity in every groove.

The LP release is planned for November 10th, on classic black and limited sea blue vinyl.

Apollo80 is:
Luke – guitar/throat/synth
Brano – bass/voice
Shane – drums

Dimartis es :
Chino Velazquez : Bateria
Luciano Pucheta : Bajo/Recs
Nazareno Ferro : Guitarra/Drones

Apollo80 on Facebook

Apollo80 on Bandcamp

Dimartis on Facebook

Dimartis on Bandcamp

Sound Effect Records on Facebook

Sound Effect Records on Bandcamp

Sound Effect Records website

Pairing Australia’s Apollo80 with Argentina’s Dimartis, Greek imprint Sound Effect Records is looking to begin a series of split LP releases called Reverberations. The two-track/38-minute full-length brings “Null Arbor” (19:54) from Apollo80 as they straddle the border between heavy psych and post-rock, then sort of decide to say screw it and rumble-jam through the spaces of their own making, and the multi-part “Los Altares/Circulos/Humo” (18:47) from Dimartis, working through a long ambient midsection bookended on either side by raw but still full-sounding riffery.

If it seems like a random pairing — it might be; would it matter, I wonder? — there are plenty of commonalities between the two acts in their respective abilities to conjure fluidity in heavy contexts, moving into and out of atmospheric stretches without giving up the aural heft or the abiding sense of exploration. I don’t know what’s on tap for the series, and most split series need three or four releases before you really get what they’re about, but there’s sprawl here and that’s a fine place to begin. Get yourself a sample with the teaser at the bottom of the post.

From the PR wire:

Sound Effect PRESENTS: Apollo80 / Dimartis: Reverberations Vol.1 – Tales of Dust and Wings

Sound Effect Records presents the release of REVERBERATIONS, a new split series with the intention of delivering bands across the planet sonically united by a musical common ground.

The first instalment, called TALES OF DUST AND WINDS sees the Western Australians APOLLO80 joining forces with the Argentinian-Patagonians DIMARTIS to take us on a trip through desertic landscapes made of winds, cold sunsets and naked rocks.

The Australians, now at the third chapter with Sound Effect Records, offer a 20-min long desert/ kosmische one-riffer cavalcade in pure Can / Neu tradition but with a heavy twist that will please the lovers of long instrumental trips. Turn the LP and you’ll find Dimartis (10 years on the scene and surprisingly at their debut on vinyl) with three tracks beautifully arranged balancing silences and reverbs that evoke the milestones of desert rock.

Really an excellent concept aiming to take us travelling through the Australian bush and the Patagonian flats with two bands that squeezed all their local authenticity in every groove.

The LP release is planned for November 10th, on classic black and limited sea blue vinyl.

Apollo80 is:
Luke – guitar/throat/synth
Brano – bass/voice
Shane – drums

Dimartis es :
Chino Velazquez : Bateria
Morgan Highstar : Guitarra/Teclas
Luciano Pucheta : Bajo/Recs
Nazareno Ferro : Guitarra/Drones

https://www.facebook.com/apollo80rocks/
https://apollo80.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100092551886450
https://dimartis.bandcamp.com/

http://www.facebook.com/SoundEffectRecords
https://soundeffectrecords.bandcamp.com
https://www.soundeffect-records.gr/

Apollo80 & Dimartis, Reverberations Vol.1 – Tales of Dust and Wings teaser

The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Shane Brennan of Apollo80

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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

Rough. I don’t practice enough.

Describe your first musical memory.

I always wanted to play drums as a kid, but my music teacher in school (that bitch!) didn’t let me.

So I saved up, bought my own kit and started jamming in the shed with my older brother.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

Probably those early shed jams with my brother as a kid.

But equally important is the whole journey I’m going through with Apollo80.

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

I usually take things as they come. I don’ really have expectations. I just go with the flow.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

A better sound!

How do you define success?

Happiness. Both feeling it and seeing it.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

I saw a guy drill into his own hand. Does that count?

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

A collaboration with different type of musicians – Bring someone new into the band to add and contribute to what we already have.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

Communication – It works with people who are open to try different ideas.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

Watching my children grow.

https://www.facebook.com/apollo80rocks/
https://apollo80.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/SoundEffectRecords/
https://www.soundeffect-records.gr/

Apollo80, Beautiful, Beautiful Desolation (2021)

Perth, Western Australia’s Apollo80 release their debut full-length, Beautiful Beautiful Desolation, on June 18 through Sound Effect Records and Kozmik Artifactz. The six-track/40-minute outing brings underlying symmetry to its spacious and spaced-out and spacey did I mention space-space-space heavy vibage, its intro and outro and four circa-nine-minute pieces melding and folding into each other in one resounding “holy crap” of a morass, but staying fluid and moving forward as well — thank you very much Shane on drums for that.

From the blanket of drone that rises to consume much of side A’s addled, headphone-ready “Terolgedo King” and “Like Men…/Corpse 65” to the crash and landmark-for-your-melting-brain riffly nod of pre-outro capper “Lung Beers,” the three-piece follow-up their suitably exclamatory 2018 debut EP, Lizard! Lizard! Lizard! (review here), with a rampage through multi-dimensional distortion and chrono-triggered heft. It’s like meeting someone on the street who comes up to you and goes, “Hey, you like Carl Sagan?” Fucking a right.

The roiling and shimmering starts with “Intro,” a line of synth casting a cinematic foreboding over the oops-there-it-goes procession forward, bringing just enough hypnosis to the feedback snap and ensuing lurch riff that begins “Teroldego King” is a shocker. Apollo80 — Shane, Luke on guitar and Brano on bass, with one or more of them taking on intermittent vocal duties — revel in the breadth. “Teroldego King” unfolds in massive form like the garbled transmission from a planet of sentient portiids, but cuts to a quiet movement in its second half, vocals coming in and going like were they real anyhow while the guitar noodles out over echoey rimshots.

They bring it back, of course, but in going so low, they make the high that much higher, and the final rumbles and crashes feel all the more affecting for it. If you can dig that, the megadrone-into-megaspace of “Like Men…/Corpse 65” is the stuff of your more chaotic dreams — the kind of shit that makes me want to leave hte typos in because screw it we’re all gonna burn anyway what’s the difference. But we’re here now, so put on headphones and dig that bass.

“Black of the White” throws out its hi-hat-propelled motion like a life-preserver into a sea of Jupiterian gas storms, and holds to it until it becomes jazz, the drums shifting after four minutes in as things start to go haywire. Vocals are treated, a mean poetry reading set to so much echo they’re barely recognizable, but the clamor fits, and the dropout-into-drop-on-your-head that ensues may be telegraphed but is no less a joy for that. Time outside (everything) is time well spent. Heavy. Psych. Tell your friends.

And while you’ve got their attention, let ’em know “Lung Beers” sent you. Stoner paean it may or may not be, but it’s a righteous preach to the converted either way, cutting as did “Teroldego King” — more of that symmetry noted earlier; a masterplan at work? — before embarking on the record’s last freakout, the guitar stripping away from the rest of the ship and embracing vacuum. In space, apparently you can still hear the shred. So be it. Weirdo Sap-style acoustic guitar reaps the aftermath in “Until the Sails Are on Fire,” maybe looped, maybe not, but as Apollo80 roll credits on their preliminary feature-length excursion, they do so having touched off a bouncing cavalcade of prime-directive-violating contact, rounding off squares where they stand and telling kids about enough new gods to get themselves thrown in jail.

Think you can jive? Well, jive to “Black of the White” on the player below. Go on. Make friends.

PR wire info and whatnot follow:

Apollo80 are doing it again! After the striking debut in 2019 the Western Australian trio is back with a new chapter of heavy-riffing exploration in the low frequencies universe. The main ingredients for the space cake are unchanged, but this new work explores a darker space with an extended use of drone atmospheres, groovy tempos and sporadic synth and vocal inserts. Beautiful, Beautiful Desolation is the title of what is going to be their first full-length and is promising to please the fans of Melvins, Earth, Toner Low and whoever aims to soak their brain in a bath of distorted frequencies.

While the intro seems to continue the space-rock voyage of their previous EP, the opening riff clears immediately the path for a heavier trip that reaches the deepest point with the feedbacks and drones of the Earth-ian Like Men Gone at Sea. Side B is a surprise again and introduces synth layers and distorted vocals that are totally new for the Perth trio, but then they close with what they do best. 90s-inspired slow riffs and a long psychedelic interlude of the banger Lungbeers carry the listener to the end of this 40+ mins work that will be brought on the streets by the joined efforts of Sound Effect Records and Kozmik Artifactz. The two veteran labels will be releasing 500 copies in black, colored and special edition vinyl and CD, including, for the first time ever, their “Lizard Lizard Lizard” vinyl-only EP!

Tracklisting:
Side A
Intro (1:47)
Teroldego King (9:37)
Like Men…/Corpse 65 (8:17)

Side B
Black of the White (9:34)
Lung Beers (9:03)
Until the Sails Are on Fire (1:48)

Apollo80 is:
Luke – guitar and space effects
Shane – drums
Brano – bass

Apollo80, Beautiful Beautiful Desolation (2021)

Apollo80 on Thee Facebooks

Apollo80 on Bandcamp

Sound Effect Records on Thee Facebooks

Sound Effect Records website

Good morning from the kitchen table. It’s a couple minutes before 4AM as I get this post started. I’ve got my coffee, my iced tea in the same cup I’ve been using for the last three days, and I’m ready to roll through the next 10 records in this massive, frankly silly, Quarterly Review. Yesterday went well enough and I’m three days into the total 10 and I don’t feel like my head is going to explode, so I’ll just say so far so good.

As ever, there’s a lot to get through, so I won’t delay. I hope you find something here you dig. I certainly have.

Quarterly Review #21-30:

Sandrider, Armada

Armada is the third full-length from Seattle noiseblasters Sandrider, and at this point I’m starting to wonder what it’s going to take for this band to get their due. Produced by Matt Bayles and released through Good to Die Records, the album is an absolute monster front to back. Scathing. Beastly. And yet the songs have character. It’s the trio’s first outing since 2015’s split with Kinski (review here) and follows 2013’s Godhead (review here) and 2011’s self-titled debut (review here) in melding the band’s West Coast noise superiority with a sense of melody and depth as the trio of guitarist/vocalist Jon Weisnewski, bassist/vocalist Jesse Roberts, and omegadrummer Nat Damm course and wind their way through intense but varied material. “Banger” has been tapped for its grunge influence. Eh. Maybe in the riff, but who cares when there’s so much more going on with it? “Brambles” is out and out brutal but still has a hook, and cuts like “Industry” and the closing “Dogwater” remind of just how skilled Sandrider are at making that brutality fun. If the record was six minutes long and just had “Hollowed” on it, you’d still call it a win.

Sandrider on Thee Facebooks

Good to Die Records website

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Witchkiss, The Austere Curtains of Our Eyes

Goodness gracious. Cavernous echo accompanies the roars of guitarist Scott Prater that are offset by the more subdued melodies of drummer Amber Burns, but even in the most spacious reaches of 11-minute second cut “Blind Faith,” Witchkiss are fucking massive-sounding. Their debut album, The Austere Curtains of Our Eyes, presents an especially crushing take on ritualistic volume, sounding its catharsis in a song like “Spirits of the Dirt” and sounding natural as it trades between a rolling assault and the atmospheres of its quieter moments. With the departure since the recording of bassist Anthony DiBlasi, the New York-based outfit will invariably shift in dynamic somewhat coming out of this record, but with such an obvious clarity of mission, I honestly doubt their core approach will change all that much. A band doesn’t make a record like this without direct intention. They may evolve, and one hopes they do just because one always hopes for that, but this isn’t a band feeling their way through their first record. This is a band who know exactly the kind of ferocity they want to conjure, and who conjure it without regret.

Witchkiss on Thee Facebooks

Witchkiss on Bandcamp

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Satta Caveira, MMI

Argentinian instrumentalist trio Satta Caveira make a point of saying they recorded MMI, their second or third album depending on what you count, live in their home studio without edits or overdubs, click tracks or anything else. Clearly the intention then is to capture the raw spirit of the material as it’s happening. The eight songs that make up the unmanageable 62-minute listen of MMI — to be fair, 14 of those minutes are opener “Kundalini” and 23 are the sludge-into-jam-into-sludge riffer “T.H.C.” — are accordingly raw, but that in itself becomes a component of their aesthetic. Whether it’s the volume swell that seems to consume “Don Santos” in its second half, the funk of closer “Afrovoid” or the drift in “Kalifornia,” Satta Caveira manage to hone a sense of range amid all the naturalism, and with the gritty and more aggressive riffing of the title-track and the rush of the penultimate “Router,” their sound might actually work with a more elaborate production, but they’ve got a thing, it works well, and I’m not inclined to argue.

Satta Caveira on Thee Facebooks

Satta Caveira on Bandcamp

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Apollo80, Lizard! Lizard! Lizard!

Vocalized only by spoken samples of astronauts, the thrice-exclamatory Lizard! Lizard! Lizard! is the debut EP from Perth, Australia, three-piece Apollo80, who are given mostly to exploring an outpouring of heavy molten vibes but still able to hone a bit of cacophony following the “godspeed, John Glenn” sample in second cut “FFH.” There are four songs on the 26-minute offering, and its spaciousness is brought to earth somewhat by the dirt in which the guitar and bass tones are caked, but it’s more the red dust of Mars than anything one might find kicking around a Terran desert. Unsurprisingly, the high point of the outing is the 10:46 title-track, where guitarist Luke, bassist Brano and drummer Shane push farthest into the cosmos — though that’s debatable with the interstellar drone of closer “Good Night” — but even in the impact of “Apollo” at the outset, there’s a feeling of low-oxygen in the atmosphere, and if you get lightheaded, that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be.

Apollo80 on Thee Facebooks

Apollo80 on Bandcamp

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The Great Unwilling, EP

The prevailing influence throughout the untitled debut EP from Minnesota’s The Great Unwilling is Queens of the Stone Age, but listening to the layer of wah intertwine with the solo on “Sanguine,” there’s more to their approach than just that, however dreamy the vocal melodies from guitarist Jesse Hoheisel might be. Hoheisel, bassist Joe Ulvi and Mark Messina present a clean four tracks and 20 minutes on their first outing, and for having been together for about 18 months, their songwriting seems to have a firm grasp on what they want to do. “If 3 was 7” rolls along at a heavy clip into an effectively drifting midsection and second half jam before returning to the initial riff, while “Current” leads off with a particularly Hommeian construction, and soon gives way to the flowing pace and apparent lyrical references of the aforementioned “Sanguine.” They finish with the dirtier tonality of “Apostasy” and cap with no more pretense than they started, bringing the short release to a close with a chorus that seems to finish with more to say. No doubt they’ll get there.

The Great Unwilling on Thee Facebooks

The Great Unwilling on Bandcamp

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Grusom, II

A prominent current of organ alongside the guitars gives Grusom‘s aptly-titled second album on Kozmik Artifactz, II, a willfully classic feel, and even the lyrics of “Peace of Mind” play into that with the opening lines, “I always said I was born too late/This future is not for me,” but the presentation from the Svendborg six-piece isn’t actually all that retro-fied. Rather, the two guitars and organ work in tandem to showcase a modern take on those classic ideas, as the back and forth conversation between them in the extended jam of “Skeletons” demonstrates, and with a steady rhythmic foundation and soulful vocals overtop, Grusom‘s craft doesn’t need the superficial trappings of a ’70s influence to convey those roots in their sound. Songs like “Dead End Valley” and “Embers” have a bloozy swing as they head toward the melancholy closer “Cursed from Birth,” but even there, the proceedings are light on pretense and the atmosphere is more concerned with a natural vibe rather than pretending it’s half a century ago.

Grusom on Thee Facebooks

Kozmik Artifactz website

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Träden, Träden

Having originated as Träd Gräs och Stenar, the group now known as Träden is the product of a psychedelic legacy spanning generations. Founder Jakob Sjöholm has joined forces with Hanna Östergren of Hills, Reine Fiske of Dungen and Sigge Krantz of Archimedes Badkar to create a kind of supergroup of serenity, and their self-titled is blissful enough not only to life up to Träd Gräs och Stenar‘s cult status, but to capture one of its own. It’s gorgeous. Presumably the painting used on the cover is the cabin where it was recorded, and its eight tracks — sometimes mellow, sometimes more weighted, always hypnotic — are a naturalist blueprint that only make the world a better place. That sounds ridiculous, I know. But the truth is that for all the terrible, horrifying shit humanity does on a daily basis, to know that there are people on the planet making music like this with such a genuine spirit behind it is enough to instill a bit of hope for the species. This is what it’s all about. I couldn’t even make it through the Bandcamp stream without buying the CD. That never happens.

Träden on Thee Facebooks

Träden on Bandcamp

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Orthodox, Krèas

Last year, Spanish experimentalists Orthodox released Supreme and turned their free-jazz meets low-doom into a 36-minute fracas of happening-right-now creativity. Krèas, a lone, 27-minute track with the core duo of bassist Marco Serrato and drummer Borja Díaz joined by saxophonist Achilleas Polychronidis, was recorded in the same session but somehow seems even more freaked-out. I mean, it’s gone. Gone to a degree that even the hepcats who claim to appreciate free-jazz on anything more than a theoretical level (that is, those who actually listen to it) will have their hair blown back. The rest of the universe? Well, they’ll probably continue on, blissfully unaware that Orthodox are out there smashing comets together like they are, but wow. Challenging the listener is one thing. Krèas is the stuff of dissertations. One only hopes Orthodox aren’t holding their breath waiting for humanity to catch up to what they’re doing, because, yeah, it’s gonna be a while.

Orthodox on Thee Facebooks

Alone Records webstore

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Disrule, Sleep in Your Honour

Danish bruisers Disrule run a brash gamut with their second album, Sleep in Your Honour (on Seeing Red). Leading off with the earworm hook of the title-track (premiered here), the album puts a charge into C.O.C.-style riffing and classic heavy rock, but shades of Clutch-y funk in “Going Wrong” and a lumbering bottom end in “Occult Razor” assure there’s no single angle from which they strike. “(Gotta Get Me Some) Control” elicits a blues-via-Sabbath vibe, but the drums seem to make sure Disrule are never really at rest, and so there’s a strong sense of momentum throughout the eight-song/29-minute EP, perhaps best emphasized by two-minute second cut “Death on My Mind,” which seems to throw elbows as it sprints past, though even shouted-chorus closer “Enter the Void” has an infectious energy about it. If you think something can’t be heavy and move, Disrule have a shove with your name on it.

Disrule on Thee Facebooks

Seeing Red Records on Bandcamp

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Ozymandias, Cake!

First clue that all is not what it seems? The artwork. Definitely not a picture of cake on the cover of Ozymandias‘ debut album, Cake!, and accordingly, things don’t take long before they get too weird. “Jelly Beans” hits on harshest Nirvana — before it goes into blastbeats. “Mason Jar” scathes out organ-laced doom and vicious screaming, before “Hangman” gets all danceable like “All Pigs Must Die” earlier in the record. The wacky quotient is high, and the keyboards do a lot to add to that, but one can’t really call “Doom I – The Daisies” or the later “Doom II – The Lilies” anything but progressive in the Devin Townsend-shenanigans-metal sense of the word, and as wild as some stretches of Cake! are, the trio from Linz, Austria, are never out of control, and they never give a sense that what they’re doing is an accident. They’re just working on their own stylistic level, and to a degree that’s almost scary considering it’s their first record. I won’t claim to know where they might be headed, but it seems likely they have a plan.

Ozymandias on Thee Facebooks

StoneFree Records website

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