It’s been a funny old week, so excuse my lack of updates. Flooded living rooms, rain storms, Arthur Lee playing new material that sounded like the most bizarrely generic cheery pop songs ever, work upheavals, broken guitars, and to cap it all I spent four hours yesterday possessed by a fungal intelligence from another dimension.

Phew.

Well anyway, a good soundtrack to some of that was Comets on Fire’s ‘Field Recordings From the Sun’ which I’m finally getting my teeth into. The sticker on the front has a quote from Julian Cope likening it to a “soaring, barnstorming Martian invasion, like the Stooges gotta deal with the U.S.A.A.F.!” Which almost nails it, but hmm, I’m not sure – I’d say it’s more like Mudhoney jamming on the wings of a dog-fighting X-Wing. But that’s just splitting hairs. Either way, myself and Julian are certainly in agreement that it’s a massive and crazed enough pile of skronking guitar abuse to make even the most jaded of our fellow unshaven noise-worshippers sit up and pay attention.

Basically what we’ve got here is a load of wild, long-winded, semi-improvised rock n’ roll shit which takes the use of effects pedals and similar gadgets in rock music to previously undreamed of levels of chaotic excess. This is music filtered and fucked with to such an extent that it’s near impossible for the different band members to play in time with each other or create anything resembling a conventional tune… it sounds like they’re trying, but there’s so much delay and echo and god knows what getting in the way that the different guitar lines find themselves actually shooting backwards and forwards through time and crashing into each other, instantly collapsing the whole enterprise into a drooling chaotic mess of shrieking jet fighters, duelling laser blasts, collapsing skyscrapers and howling feedback demons as the musicians lose sight of the tune altogether and decide “fuck it..”, heading off instead into yet more multi-layered improv noise-solo carnage, battling with the disintegrating shards of what they were playing five minutes ago. Basically, this is the closest approximation yet of the perfect Thurston Moore/Kevin Shields wet dream extravaganza which somebody must some day record. Oddly, it sounds very similar to Mainliner, Kawabata Makoto’s pre-Acid Mothers Temple noise rock group, who you should check out immediately if you like this sort of thing.

As such, you won’t be surprised to hear that I’m rather fond of this album. At times the utter chaos and lack of structure can get a bit irritating and you wish they could focus a bit more, but no sooner has that thought passed your mind than you’re lost deep inside it again, freakin’ out to another amaaazzziinng frazzled assault on the heart of the sun. As you may have gathered from all the hyberbole, this is a great album to try and review.. I keep having to restrain myself from writing stuff like “If Pink Floyd set the controls for the heart of the sun, Comets on Fire sound like they were fucking born and raised in the centre of it!”. And so on.

I have two particular favourite bits on ‘Field Recordings from the Sun’:

Firstly, ‘The Unicorn’, the acoustic interlude in the centre of the record on which Ben Chasny (of Six Organs of Admittance renown) weaves hypnotic psyche-folk finger-picking patterns whilst a faint hum in the background gradually grows into a storm of raging electronic noise that completely consumes him. It’s an absolutely beautiful track with a similar atmosphere to Sonic Youth’s ‘Providence’, and it offers a fascinating glimpse of the possibilities for future Comets on Fire outtings beyond just fucking the shit out of supercharged vintage echo boxes.

Secondly, the bit towards the end of the final, and best, track – ‘The Black Dog’ – in which, almost by accident, all the spiralling madness comes to together for a moment into one colossal, perfect riff and it’s just like.... The giant black sun slowly rising over the barren earth the day after the final battle as gigantic mechanical war insects stalk amongst the charred remains of what was once humanity.

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Whoa. And to think some people still listen to Morrissey.

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