NUDE SUNRISE "Should Be" c62 (Spooky Town)
Stoners, skaters, psychers, slackers, jammers, burners. Chillin' with this tape. First time I put this one on was after leaving Chicago on the way to Dover, OH on a tour with some dudes back in April. We had just spent a weekend with these guys, who also run that dank Nitetrotter blog, first at their homebase Schwag City, a dumpy old house with a useless ceiling fan, and then at their now-defunct warehouse paradise called Drone City (RIP). There was a lot of getting high, mostly puffing on some Mary Jane but there was DMT around and some weird pills. They had some chill ass cats with names like Fela Booty and De'mond Dekker. We watched a gang of skate videos. We saw some noise shows. It was fucking tight kicking it with this crew of weirdos and their awesome weirdo friends but I had no idea what to expect from their music. We had been listening to all kinds of records at the warehouse so there was little to infer from their tastes alone. I guess I anticipated something tripped, considering that Jay Feather put on a Rene Hell tape for us to fall asleep to (it ended up giving us killer Starcraft flashback dreams). So when I cranked up the stereo from the backseat to hear the first song, which is the title track, I was pretty surprised to hear a one-chord, six minute space-blues jam with wah pedals and a funk-ass bass line, with some scrawny sounding dude singing about some weird trippy shit and asking "Are you a God? No? Then die!" like we were at some fucked up acid party on a star-temple or some shit. I was way down. The eight or so other tracks definitely keep on the psych/kraut jammer style but reveal a distinct aspect of the band with each song. There's an excellent Neil Young cover on here that even your dad would probably like. They have the blues down, no problems. They also do a particularly drippy T. Rex jam that is perfect for rolling and smoking a fatty doobie to. There's a live track on it too with some voice samples played in reverse with a primitive drum line, wish I could have seen that performance. This music can be listened to anywhere, that's one of this tape's strengths. I've played it at work, on drives, BBQ-ing and in between sets at shows. The dudes definitely locked in on something sick here. Future Americana Midwest Industrial Mutant Vibes, Chicago Style. Spooky Town Records in Brattlebro, VT just gave the tape the pro-treatment, complete with an innercity skate art j-card and fresh, pro-dubbed, grape-popsicle-purple cassettes, limited to 200. One of my favorite tapes of the year, hands down. Feeling good in the USA.