We've been waiting for this one for ages. After an insanely
limited 7" single, which was so scarce, no one we know has actually
ever even seen a copy, let alone bought one, and a teaser video on
YouTube, and all sorts of rumors about this Swedish band who were
influenced by African music and voodoo and came from some mysterious
village no one had ever heard of, well, needless to say, we were DYING
for the full length, and it does not disappoint.
So the story goes, in a tiny village in Sweden called
Korpolombolo, there has existed a band called Goat for generations,
this is just the first incarnation of the band that has captured any
of their music on tape. Supposedly the village was cursed by some sort
of voodoo witch doctor, who was put to death for being a witch, and
introducing voodoo worship to this tiny village. It only takes one
Google search to discover that there is no such village, or so say the
skeptics, but we choose to BELIEVE, and that village is just so
obscure and tiny and tucked away, that it has even escaped the notice
of Google. And whether it's true or not, the IDEA of it definitely
influences the music of Goat, whose sound most definitely has a
serious African vibe, the percussion, the vocals, it's heady
concoction of wild psychedelic space rock, all driving krautrock
rhythms, and tangled squalls of electric guitar freakout, and dense
rhythmic percussion, and almost double dutch sounding vocals. When we
first threw this on, our first impression was that it sounded like a
weird mix of Konono No.1, The Heads and (believe it or not) the Go!
Team, which even now, after constant listening doesn't seem that far
off.
The tracks are dense, and psychedelic, heavy, fuzzy, definitely
Stooges-y at times, Hawkwindy at others, several of the tracks display
a Miles Davis style grooviness, sounding like a SUPERCHARGED ultra
heavy Bitches Brew, others pound away sounding exactly how you might
imagine some ancient voodoo ritual would sound reimagined by some
modern Swedish psychedelic space rock outfit. "Goatman" (from the 7")
is the perfect intro, after a strange sample, and some tribal
drumming, the guitars come cascading in, wild squalls of psychedelic
wah guitar, and keening high end wails, then the vocals come in,
belted out over the fuzzed out bass, the percussion wild and groovy,
it's total Swedish Afro-psych, or something, if this one track
stretched out and filled up the whole record, it STILL would have been
Record Of The Week.
The band do have a surprisingly broad palette though, whether
it's the subdued acid folk Appalachia of "Goathead", or the organ
driven Afro-groove of the appropriately titled "Disco Fever", with its
percussion heavy funk swaddled in progged out organs, and then there's
the equally funky "Golden Down", that sounds like some Southeast Asian
Sublime Frequencies jam, but here cranked up, the guitars super
distorted, the bass dangerously buzzy, the sound blissfully in-the-
red, the drums wild and loose, the ultimate heavy psychedelic dance
band, for those three minutes you can almost imagine these guys
jamming out at the edge of the world in some alternate dimension seedy
dive, with a dancefloor full of damned souls. Sweaty and swaggery and
fierce as fuck. "Let It Bleed" delivers a more laid back groove, and
even introduces some saxophone, which gives it the vibe once again of
some psych-ed up Ethiopian groove. "Run To Your Mama" melds serious
Sabbath-y riffage to some wild tribal percussion, and wailed vox,
while "Goatlord" unfurls some dark psych folk, replete with super
distorted heavy psych leads, over urgent strumming and cooed echo
drenched vox, sounding a bit like a more psychedelic Comus in fact.
And finally, the record finishes off with the epic "Det Som
Aldrig Forandras", with its bagpipe sounding opening, that quickly
explodes into a heady psychedelic groove, droned out and hypnotic, the
sort of jam that should/could have been ENDLESS, but instead, works
its way back to a seriously heavy psychedelic coda, bookending the
brief 3 minute opener, again, the sort of jam they could have
stretched out for another twenty minutes, and we would have been in
heaven, but the fact that it loops back around to the beginning, only
adds a strange sort of endless ritual vibe to the proceedings, and
makes it that much easier to play it all over again. And again. And
again. Forever.
Super swank, die cut, eye popping artwork too, on the cd and lp
both!
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