Friday 14 January 2022

REVIEW: Paranoid Alice 'Live at the Factory'

 

A masterpiece in left-field experimental rock music, which combines every technique under the sun, from buzzsaw guitar feedback to ghostly bass, drums played with bananas, exotic sitars, and low-fi keys. Its a tidal wave of sound, linking everything that was unique about the Velvet Underground, Brian Jonestown Massacre & 80's Jesus & Mary Chain and turns it up to 20!

Its five tracks each capture a distorted feel mixing the rumble of footsteps walking down a misty midnight alley and Jack The Ripper waiting in the wings to stick his knife down your throat. Opening track 'Dreams Are Only Meant To Be Dreamt' is exactly this. Drummer Mat Kenny hazely plays his drums using bananas as mallets, while bassist Luca Crews stalks the beat as it amps up. Guitarist Fabrizio Federico can be heard in the background playing spider web licks as the song dares to look into the sun until it blinds you.

LISTENhttps://youtu.be/ZDuvyGwAe0I

Mixing psychedelic sounds, grunge, pop and classical avant-garde, the band are in a league with current bands pushing sonic bounderies such Black Midi, Empath, The Horrors, Gnoomes & Greys. 

'Morphine' captures everything right about a band in the middle of a fist fight to break through each others eye sockets. The song speeds into an apocalypse of meyhem. 'Pop Girl Of 1966' has a seductive swagger as if its walking down a New York City street dressed in leopard print and Edie Sedgwick sunglasses.

As the album progresses the titles explain it all, experimental music has never been so outrageous and free as this. 'Vietnam Underground' is the sound of a plague of flies, voodoo feel to it, as the guitar phase creates a witchcraft sense of dread with a paranormal call and response between bass and drums similar to a Vietnamese napalm ridden jungle.

The albums closer 'Angel Dust' is the track that pushes the brains nerves to the absolute limits even incorporating sitar into the mix as each member dances into a tornado of supersonic future sounds leaving the listener bleeding.