In some ways, my awarding the top spot this year to a Mike Vest bands is more of a token thing than anything else – an acknowledgement of the fact that my relationship with the voluminous quantities of music put up for sale by this modern day renaissance man of ear-splitting guitar noise is somewhat akin to that of Homer Simpson and the “lady, he’s putting my kids through college” hotdog vendor.

Maybe other listeners may beg to differ, but for my tastes, between Mr Vest’s work with Bong, 11 Paranoias, Haikai No Ku, Drunk in Hell, new outfit Melting Hand and numerous other more tangential/one-off projects, there is scarcely a weak link to be found. If not exactly reinventing the wheel at any point, Vest’s understanding and apparent mastery of numerous previously established modes of heavy rock/psych/noise guitar is a remarkable – and more to the point, hugely enjoyable – achievement, making his Visual Volume web store an almost inexhaustible resource for those of us who are more or less constantly in search of stuff that sounds a bit like Skullflower, Les Rallizes Denudes, White Heaven, Earth, Chrome, Burning Witch or whatever other specialised flavour of six string extremism you’re currently in the mood for, more than likely.

That said though, 2015’s two Blown Out LPs are nonetheless very much on another plain vis-à-vis their position as nigh-on perfect exemplars of the space-rock idiom. Building on the foundations laid by 2014’s Drifting Way Out Between Suns, both of these albums see Blown Out’s rhythm section (John Michael Headly / bass, Matt Baty / drums) coming to the fore, laying down a loose, muscular and thoroughly blissful backbeat, pitched somewhere between ‘Funhouse’ and ‘Jack Johnson’, that presents Vest’s perma-stoned, echo and fuzz drenched interstellar excursions to their best possible advantage (think maybe Dave Brock on ‘Space Ritual’ if he totally forgot to return to the riff and just went way out there).

Beyond that, there’s not really a great deal of point in picking out individual tracks or moments amid this morass of highly refined jamage, other than to perhaps advise potential consumers that whilst ‘Jet Black Hallucinations’ contains the heavier, more propulsive, riff-based jams, ‘Planetary Engineering’s first side ventures more into the abstract, favouring hypnotic, trudging tempos and enhanced by a plethora of overdubs and appropriately trippy ‘outer space’ studio effects (subtly applied, mind you), tempting me to add the first Ash Ra Tempel LP to my above roll-call of psych guitar heavies, whilst the B side returns to ‘the riff’ with great force and directness, sounding perhaps like the awesome mega-jam that a band like Nebula or Spirit Caravan might end their set with in an alternate world where they were considerably cooler and more daring than they are in our own reality. Then it goes into a kind of extended ‘breakdown’ section that sounds, inevitably, like something off ‘Space Ritual’, and all is right with the world.

And, that’s that really. No great emotional significance or existential revelations to impart here, just a reminder that, when I’m sitting at home of an evening doing whatever, I currently enjoy this kind of music more than just about anything else in the world of sound organised by humans. If you know what I’m talking about it the paragraphs above, get on it. If you don’t, or simply don’t care – no matter. Let’s get suited up, hit the escape pod, and see what 2016 has to offer. More of this kind of thing probably, but I’ll try not to bore you with it too much.

Listen and buy from Mike Vest/Visual Volume via Bandcamp.

Labels: best of 2015, Blown Out