5 Jul 2012

'Wine Women and Song or two' review Goat - Goathead tape


Great blog Wine Women and Song and two have reveiwed the now sold out Goat tape that came out a few months ago:


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“The roads of Scotland afford little diversion to the traveller, who seldom sees himself either encountered or overtaken, and who has nothing to contemplate but grounds that have no visible boundaries.” – Samuel Johnson.


When I first listened to this Goat EP I just laughed manically for the entire duration. I spun it again straight away and laughed all the way through again. The band I was most instantly transported to spiritually was Sir Lord Baltimore, I had a similar reaction to their Kingdom Come LP that is still 37 minutes of more frantic and orgasmic fun than any of us has any right to have. The pseudo-psyche afro-funk junk-drunk guitar workouts of the most psychedelically bizarre are just instantly and eternally exuberant. That Goat are playing shows in deepest darkest Sweden with Acid Mothers Temple ought to come as a surprise to virtually nobody as soon as they get an earful of exactly what these guys do. The songs all bounce with youth and life and make you want to do the same. More and more with each lesson their exuberant rituals embody that statement of the great Hamilton Morris, “life is but a cosmic giggle on the breath of the universe” ‘cuz that’s the mood envoked by this kind of bombastic high-energy lysergic rock and roll; the sound of a laugh at a crowded party; the sound of instantly dissipated cosmic perfection synthesised down in unconventional sound laboratories meant for innerspace exploration, not outerspace categorisation; a volume conquistador conjured to explore us in a way filled with such high energy that it positively fizzes. They’re conjuring the spirits of the still living and they come up dancing. They’re the perfect road record, perfect to watch that white line dance around in front of you as the hot nose devours the road. Hundreds of miles sucked under the spinning wheels. Burning down the highway.Heading west. Chasing our shadows in the early morning.


Yes, unless you’ve recently had brain surgery and are coming off the anaesthetic you’ve probably picked up that today was the beginning of part two (the proper part) of my Highland adventure. While this will by no means be a travel diary, the music we pick is gonna be all about what we’re doing so it’ll inevitably slip in I guess and I’m not even trying to hide from it. Today Goat have been accompanying us across the empty lands of Scotland, between Inverness and the West. The schizo-afro-funk is the trippy concoction that’s taking us across the great literal distances as well as allowing our souls free-reign over a massive sonic plain, we don’t own it, you can’t own this space. It’s a powerful cocktail of collective music-making. There’s a thrumming wah guitar and a fuzzy bass as well as drums thumping to a tribal and million-miles-an-hour beat, but there’s chanting female vocals panning left and right like acid tracers and there’s all kinds of shit. I guess if you’re in the right place at the right time and you wanna make some noise, you too can be on a Goat record because for its entire runtime this thing is just a riot. The thing is essentially structureless, without any coherent beginning, middle or end and is more of a definite trip; the oneness of the experience eclipsing all traditional methods of understanding order. A thing that kicks this musical magicianship above all others in the grand scheme (and possibly the record collection of the Great Magnet) is it’s brevity; too many psyche bands aren’t able to reign in their trips to reasonable lengths; I just took delivery of Electric Moon’s Inferno masterstroke but I’m having trouble clamping down on it with a fifty minute runtime. I know that’s testament to how cluttered my life and my mind has gotten and not a negative reflection on Electric Moon but still; I’m digging on these songs being four-minute spasms rather than twenty minute fits, is the point I’m dancing merrily around. The volume of which the stereo in the car was capable was truly terrific, and it only increased with all the windows rolled down as we let our freak flag fly with repeat following repeat of the single eight-minute span of this distilled genius as we bore down on our destination in an iron steed with fiery nostrils; ready to chill out and enjoy something, we didn’t know what. Back on Friday.


Written under duress by Steven.


See story in full here

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