ZODIACS

The Noiseweek staff is on an annual company retreat this week and though we remembered to water the plants, turn off the lights, and leave a copy of our Bible playing at max volume on the turntable, no one bothered to actually take care of this week's post. So we hafta do a quick one from the road, w/out even the ability to provide our loyals a full mp3 (will rectify that upon return to the HQ)...but luckily there are already some online samples up from a rec that's been tearing our ears out lately, namely the beautifully self-indulgent, unashamedly derivative lo-fi wah-damage of Zodiacs. Presumably a spinoff from Zodiac Mountain, this is a trio of relatively well-known alias-addicts sporting yet another set of wacky pseudonyms (I'll spare you the hilarity here, just check their Holy Mountain page for details), and cranking out aimeless overloaded psych-noise in the collapsed vein of, well, way too much stuff to list, but my tastes in the category run to HM gods Davis Redford Triad and the most poorly recorded Marble Sheep epics, and the Zodiacs hold up on that scale pretty well.

This type of stuff is pretty simple - guitar wank full of effects, backed either by nothing or a loping semi-bluesy, uh, "beat" - and, most essentially, recorded in a manner such that everything sounds like a big pile of distortion quicksand sure to suck even the smallest iota of clarity down into its man-eating muck. I'm a sucker for anything committed to tape in such a manner, but it especially works well for guitar wank, which only really clicks if it's folding in on itself, each note/sound/whatever being muffled and overlapping and catching communal fire like a California forest. Zodiacs have this all down perfectly - of the four tracks on Gone, two are more solemn, vaguely mellow meditations that still breath smoke and static, but two others - "Born Free" and "Get Off/Come Together" (the latter being covers maybe? I don't really wanna pay that much attention - close focus defeats the purpose of noise like this) - are pure fireballs of unfettered, unembarrassed pedal pushing - big red skies of rock/noise pud-pulling that reach the highs of that one great Marble Sheep record that rarely sits more than five feet from my stereo. All in all, Gone is a prime example of the kind of gunky dreck that, were it the literal mudpit that it sounds like, I'd happily drive a brand new car right into and accept it as my best possible grave.

mp3 (samples - see bottom right of page - full mp3 to come!):
ZODIACS - Gone