We get a lot of crap CDs at the self-titled offices. But once in a while, a pleasant surprise slips into our promo stack. Here’s a recent delivery that knocked the s/t staff on its collective ass.
The Artist/ Album: Mugstar, …Sun, Broken… (Important, 2010)
The Vibe: What this Liverpool band excels at–repetitive but rad space rock–certainly isn’t new, but their economical way of riding the grooves on this record makes it a must-listen. While the clumsily-titled “Furklausundbo” closes Mugstar’s laser light show off with 13 minutes of mind expansion, the rest of the record doesn’t eclipse the six-minute mark, and two tracks (the sonar blips and scraped metal plates of “Labrador Hatchet,” the pure dark-ambient washes of “She Ran Away With My Medicine”) are essentially interludes. Meanwhile, the only vocals are Peter Smyth’s wails towards the end of “Today Is the Wrong Shape.”
Restraint on a psych LP? Yep.
RIYL: Third eye explorations; Pink Floyd-scored planetariums; trance tracks that have nothing to do with Tiësto