Thursday, September 8, 2011

The Electronic Hole - The Electronic Hole 1970

The Electronic Hole exists in a strange netherworld between Cosmic Michael-style endearing ineptitude and strangely effective, stuttering, trance-inducing folk-rock sounds. The main problem, or charm if you want to see it that way, is that the Electronic Hole's ambition tends to outstrip their playing abilities. Drums stumble, vocals waver off key, and the rhythm guitar tends to get a little distracted. On the more conventional songs, this doesn't work out very well. Fortunately, there are some longer, droning tracks which make for a far groovier listen.

My view on this album is that the songs under five minutes are pretty disposable, but the ones longer than that are worth a listen. "The Golden Hour Part IV" is like a distilled, sloppier "Venus in Furs" with a garage-band plunking bassline driving it along, while "Love Will Find A Way Part II" has a fuzzed-out minimalism that strikes me as a predecessor to the signature Spacemen 3 sound. "Love Will Find A Way Part III" is one of those raga rockers that tend to shoot straight for the sweet spot in my ear. Meanwhile, tracks like the opening "The Golden Hour Part I" test my patience a bit as we hear the band attempt a sunburst West Coast rock sound, yet the band can't play their instruments very well and their ability to stay in time with each other is even worse.

Although harbouring some serious flaws, the Electronic Hole's long player has at least half of a pretty hep album for you psychedelic junkies. Hey, that's all Love's "Da Capo" can lay claim to as well. Anyway, you can start the dirty jokes about the band's name... now. Thanks to Chrisgoesrock and Dr. Schluss' Garage of Psychedelic Obscurities.

listen here

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Popular Posts