TRUFFLELINA “The Book of Truff” (Stronj Flow)

This is a dense & intriguing album.  Profound.  The singer exudes total ownership of the material, which moves through diverse modes and moods.  Soulful and  intellectual.  Impressive.  Psychedelic singer-songwriter blitzes, some quite long, everything feeling free & easy, open & wandering.  A real treasure trove, there’s a lot of lyrics that I get in glimpses & glimmers.  The package design is cared-for, classic.  There’s so much to unpack.  As a beginning, it barrels into a psychedelic assault of rollicking drums, full-tilt beat-poet gush wallowage, and guitar squall, then a pair of woodwinds blow alongside the rumblings of low-frequency noise.  There’s theater, camp, pathos, shifts & movements.  All art, all freaks.  I bet if I had a better appreciation for Frank Zappa I’d be better at describing this album.  Inspiring. 

--Kevin Oliver

CORNER CORONAH / THE ELECTRIC NATURE split “Corner Coronah/the Electric Nature” (Stronj Flow)

Precious fucking few sounds on the CC side of this tape have any place in the naturally occurring acoustic world. Which is nice. Kinda sounds like if maybe instead of all of history’s teenage energy that was spent towards accomplishing all those videogame feats was instead spent recreating the last few billion years worth of earth’s landforming, with outerspace microphones directed towards forming mountains and retreating oceans. The second song has…what the fuck? Vocals? Good thing they sound like aliens capital-T trying to sound like humans emoting! Don’t pay too much attention or blood will shoot out yr nose. Waaaay too much dissonance to play on the jambox while around other non-consenting adults, lest they, too speak only through tons of echo/flanger pedals. Sounds like a well rehearsed nightmare. A pleasant one.  If it weren’t for the human-based field recordings (aka movie quotes) towards the end, I’d be fairly certain that this was a time capsule we found on Mars*. I looked high & low for info on this band and found jack shit. I hope that, in a few years, if I look again, i yield far different results. *note, I’m not Martian by any stretch of the imagination.

The ‘the Electric Nature’ side of this reminds me of Pelt and Psychic Paramount. More the latter, though. Sounds like a lot of fun to play or witness live…as this recording is taken from a show somewhere in Atlanta, Georgia. Loud music is fun, yeah?

The juxtaposition of these two verymuchnotalike artists makes for a fun collage if you flip the tape back & forth. I highly recommend this course of action.

http://theelectricnature.bandcamp.com/

http://stronjflow.riggonia.com/

- - Jacob An Kittenplan