Friday Full-Length: Asteroid & Blowback, Split LP
Posted in Bootleg Theater on September 8th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Oh, the fuzz! What a time to be alive! Released in 2006 through a then-comparatively-nascent Fuzzorama Records — the catalog number is FuzzCD005; they’re past 40 by now — the Asteroid and Blowback split LP from the Örebro-based outfits arrived in fairly unassuming style. Its cover has the names of the bands, a pinwheel design, greenish tint. Not minimal necessarily, but you wouldn’t call it grandiose. It wasn’t the first release from either band, as Asteroid had a demo in 2004 and a self-titled EP in 2005 — man, I’d love to hear those; I bet there’s a CD-R somewhere — and Blowback had a five-song demo/EP also in 2005, also self-titled. But it was early days for both, and the progression that these two acts would undertake afterward across Asteroid‘s three full-lengths and Blowback‘s two can be traced to these corresponding six-song sets issued on CD some 17 years ago.
And yeah, 17 years both is and isn’t a long time. In rock and roll, it’s a bygone age. Legacies have been set, bands have come and gone and come again — including Asteroid — and the evolution of style and trend has continued mostly unabated since. But there’s more than intellectual value in this material, and more to Asteroid and Blowback than some hackneyed moral about the early potential of what would turn out to be good bands showing itself in raw form. In the organic tones of both acts as recorded by Truckfighters bassist/vocalist Oskar Cedermalm — whose band had just put out their own debut, the landmark Gravity X, in 2005 — and in the classic elements showcased within their styles, whether it’s the semi-retro vibes of Blowback pieces like “Holy Skies” and the swinging “Cosmic Dust” or the hand-percussion of Asteroid‘s “Supernova” and the melodic flourish of “Hexagon,” you can hear the roots of what they’d become.
The songs are songs — verses, choruses, bridges, solos, ends, etc. — but in Asteroid‘s jammier heavy-mellow languidity offset by the speedier stop-start swing of “Sim-Sala-Bim,” which makes it a party, and in the jazzy cymbal taps of the quiet noodly stretch in Blowback‘s “The Arquitect,” the mood is exploratory, exciting. Fresh. Each group offers six songs across a CD-era 62-minute runtime, and that’s plenty enough for each ‘side’ to have a flow of its own, Asteroid first and Blowback second as the cover and de facto title indicate. “Supernova” leads off which chunky-style fuzz riffing and some calmer wah, but moves into its middle with the aforementioned percussion as if to say, “Yeah, but we also do this,” and fleshing out the funkier aspects of their sound. “Anagram” and “Walk Alone” both demonstrate the dual-vocals of bassist/vocalist Johannes Nilsson and guitarist/vocalist/organist Robin Hirse — Martin Ström was reportedly the drummer at the time, but I’m not 100 percent on that — that would become such a part of Asteroid‘s sound on their three albums to-date, as they play around arrangements through psych-blues, fuzzy push and laid back stonerism, the heavy-hippie spirit palpable right up to the fadeout of the jam in “The Big Trip Beyond,” which caps what I almost can’t help but think of as their ‘side’ of the release.
As they almost invariably would, Blowback introduce themselves with a wah riff at the outset of “Holy Skies” and go on after 15 seconds or so to unfold a rich fuzz tied to Asteroid‘s own by methodology and production alike, with the first-name-only four-piece of guitarist Seb, bassist Crille, drummer Henke and vocalist Stefan taking some influence from the likes of Dozer in their hook there, answering the good-times vibes of the first six cuts on the split with some cowbell, and circling back to the chorus in a way that feels reliable and satisfying in kind. That is to say they groove plenty and the structures come across as somewhat tighter, though that assessment is certainly relative. But if you can’t nod to the nod under that solo in “Holy Skies,” go back and try again, because it’s there, right before the backmasked vocals end the track and “Autumn Leaf” begins its thick-bottom-end march with deceptive swing and movement, a slow shuffle that breaks in the middle to dreamier janga-janga before the riff returns, the vocals go watery and they delightfully fuzz-bounce to a fadeout ahead of “Fairys Dance.”
Here’s the Sabbath, if you’ve been waiting for it. There’s some shimmer layered in the fuzz of the second chorus on the quicker Blowback song, but the riff is duly Iommic and gives over to a sample under the solo and some peppered-in background vocals, tambourine and three or four fake endings before the bass exits as the last element to go into the subdued post-Witchcraft/pre-Graveyard slow, vintage-feeling proto-doom blues of “Cosmic Dust.” A highlight of the release for its sense of creep as well as the boogie that emerges therefrom and the layered chorus that accompanies, “Cosmic Dust” twists in the guitar and bass later on and doesn’t want for a payoff before its on-the-jam fade, but like “Fairys Dance” it doesn’t get anymore lost than it wants to. “The Arquitect” loosens the reigns more, has some push in the hook of its first half, before the handclaps and before when at four minutes in they give a clear break into the jam they’ll build back up and use as the crescendo of their outbound trajectory, fading out once more to let “Invisible Touch” serve as epilogue, which is fair enough as a four-and-a-half-minute comedown from the entrenched fuzz threaded through the 11 cuts prior.
After this, as noted, Asteroid put out three LPs — 2007’s self-titled (discussed here), 2010’s II (discussed here, review here) and 2016’s III (review here) — and other odds and ends before announcing a hiatus in 2017 that would end the next year. There have been rumors of new stuff in the works for a while, and if it happens that they do something else, great. Between Asteroid‘s III and Blowback‘s 2008 debut, Morning Wood — after which they signed to Transubstans for 2010’s 800 Miles (review here) — I had a hard time picking what would cap the week, but it was the nebulous character of Asteroid and Blowback that spoke to me, and I guess sometimes you can have both and get away with it.
As always, thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy.
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Well, kindergarten started this week. That’s been a labor. And exhausting. And hot. It’s been so god damned hot here. The Patient Mrs.’ car — which exaggerates, but still — had it at 107 the other day. What is this, Psycho Las Vegas? No way it should be that hot in New Jersey, basically ever. And even if it was really 102, or 98, or whatever, the same applies. Instant sweat. Change your clothes three times a day, not the least after walking part-way to kindergarten dropoff.
First day was chaos, but she made it through. I asked her teacher how she did and got the usual, “We had some trouble listening. She kind of wants to do her own thing. We’ll work on it,” as a not-so-encouraging answer. Yeah, guess what? My kid doesn’t fucking listen. She’s not going to. I told this story to The Patient Mrs. this week, but I remember The Pecan being a baby strapped in a high chair not much more than a year old, making the clear decision for the first time that she wasn’t going to do what she was told. And what had I told her to do? Take a bite of the cut-up string cheese I’d given her for lunch. She looked right at me like she was Neo in the fucking Matrix, put the cheese down and — without saying it — was a clear “no” on the request. That’s how it’s been ever since.
So you’re not going to get her to listen, and if you try, she’s going to work against you. And you know what? She’s going to win. She’s got more energy, she’s intelligent and knows how to manipulate a situation her way, and I guarantee that whatever bullshit she’s arguing about that she wants to do, she cares much, much more about it than you do. You can’t work against her. You have to work with her. You have to redirect her energy in such a way as to make it productive. Tell her to read a book. Ask her about black holes. Ask her a math problem. Ask her to write a story about a dragon driving some monster trucks on the moon or something. It was the first day, and I’m not blaming the teacher — my mother taught for 35 years in a town near here called Butler; I have great enough sympathy for the plight of teachers that I didn’t become one when I probably should have — but it wasn’t the start we’d hoped for, of course.
And after the first day, when it was like, “Okay, let’s get ready to go back tomorrow,” the kid was all, “You mean I have to do this again?,” which I get. It was nerve-racking and overwhelming and even the dopamine drip of holding the puppy wasn’t necessarily a salve. We did dropoff just her and me yesterday. And the dog, I guess. Dog kind of comes everywhere and is small enough at 12 weeks old to do that. There’s a part of me that’s bummed thinking romantically about The Pecan’s untamed heart, her wild, has-an-idea-and-is-so-excited-she-does-laps-around-the-living-room self, being told to sit in a chair and color blocks in a way that requires counting to three, something she’s been able to do since she was two, being trained to, what, get a job someday? Maybe live in one of the many shitbox condos that somehow cost half a million dollars around here? I’d be bummed going to kindergarten too. Ain’t nobody in kindergarten talking about The Pecan’s light-cycle, which is a motorcycle she invented that goes faster than the speed of light and runs on light energy.
But as someone who apparently didn’t, I can appreciate the fact that you have to learn how to be and live among other people, and school is where that happens.
Anyhoozle, next week is Desertfest NYC, so I’ll have a couple days — thanks entirely to The Patient Mrs. — to take that in and shuft focus from nervous stress to covering the fest, which is different nervous stress. I’ve been missing the Vitus Bar. It’ll be incredible to see Colour Haze there, and there isn’t a bummer day to be found in the lineup. I’m looking forward to it, ad I have been for a while now.
So have a great and safe weekend. Rest up, watch your head, hydrate, maybe go somewhere and have fun if that’s your thing. In any case, thanks again for reading and I’ll of course have posts up before the Desertfest pre-show on Thursday, and post coverage probably Friday, Saturday and Sunday rather than close out next week as normal, so have two great and safe weekends, I guess.
FRM.
