I’m gonna say shut up and hang on a second here, because you need to
pay attention to Holypalms to fully appreciate the crazy amounts of energy
crammed into these two spools of magnetic tape. Yeah, maybe Moscow’s Pavel
Eremeev used to play guitar in a math rock band (uSSSy), and maybe that informs
a lot of what’s going on here, but there’s so much more fabulous musculature in
these one-man freakouts than should even be possible. Eremeev manages to sound
like three or four full bands even though it was just him wandering around Asia
with a baritone guitar and a laptop. And maybe also two cargo pockets full of
LSD tabs, ’cause holy mountain, I’m getting a contact high off all this wild
tunage. It’s gonna start sounding like the best thing ever to me pretty soon,
and I’m gonna try to pawn it off to you as such if I’m not careful.
It is pretty great though. Eremeev refers to this project as
“electro-noise-raga,” and that’s a good place to start. Opener “Jungle Judge
(gnawaRemake)” gallops out of the gate at top speed, wreaking time-signature
havoc on anyone dumb enough to try to head-nod along with it. To paraphrase
Busta Rhymes, you’ll only end up breaking your neck. The guitar is tense and
distorted, running along all sorts of Indian raga scales, slithering back and
forth so fast it’s impossible to keep up. It’s easy to see where Eremeev’s math
rock background comes in – he’s ready to take on the challenge of doing it all
by himself. The rest of Jungle Judge
follows suit in all sorts of surprising, rousing, and imaginative ways,
showcasing Eremeev’s inventiveness as a one-man human blowtorch with a guitar.
This tape is one hell of a face-melter.
By the time you’re “Stoned in the Jungle Stolen by the Liana” (what?!),
there’s no turning back. It and “Surbahared Valse” end the album with
twenty-four minutes of psychedelic warfare, an MK Ultra experiment across
pulsing states of consciousness from which you can only emerge molded and
reformed according to Holypalms’ vision. It’s a good vision, but it’s massively
weird, and you’ll never be the same again. That’s OK – whenever you pop this
sucker into your tape deck, you’re automatically in for the ride of your life,
and I can’t say enough how much fun that
ends up being. Even if you hallucinate for the duration, remember, you’re not
on drugs, you’re on Holypalms. Keep it that way.
--Ryan Masteller
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