Musical Masochism
We are looking inside the heads of two Finnish musical
time-travellers and pilferers who have gathered, assimilated, pigeon-holed –
sometimes quite haphazardly and daftly – reassembled, dismantled, synthesised,
lost, part-found, destroyed, injected with helium, consulted through imaginary
operatic osmosis with Pete Townsend, plagiarised, deconstructed from a merging
of Abba and The Beatles, psychedelicised, and then threw into the air and let fall
through the assemblage of "The Great
Stalacpipe Organ" (the largest musical instrument in the world), Edison's
"Ghost Machine", Professor A.D. Conrow's "Psychical
Predictor" and a 500 000 volt Tesla Coil Synthesizer, as the band’s
website explains.
The result? An interrogative lacking the slightest aural foothold
from which to provide a smidgeon of a sensible answer. An intuitive first response
is to acknowledge that it engages and amuses. The madness of the method is impressive
on the one hand, but disorienting on the other. For this listener, opener Queenswave introduces a modernised
psychedelia that fully engages but which doesn’t last – obviously – as the
contemporary operatic quest moves through its multitude of distorted influences.
Depending on the musical era of your inclination – or planet of origin – you will
be hooked by a snippet of reinvented musical mayhem, and then left aroused but possibly
unsatisfied as the spaced-out spaceship moves quickly on.
If your musical masochism is to invite an aural pummelling, this
is your violent visitor come with a gargantuan guffaw and gavel.
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