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(More customer reviews)Readers of my reviews know just how much I loved the now defunct Laddio Bolocko. And just how excited I was when half of Laddio Bolocko resurfaced in The Psychic Paramount, displaying a sound that somehow managed to be the perfect extension of what LB were doing when they called it quits along with a healthy dose of some all new sh-t that took all the things I loved about Laddio to impossible to imagine extremes.
Laddio Bolocko was like a super distorted, blown out, mathrock Krautrock band. Repetitive, propulsive, complex, heavy, but weird as f-ck! And actually I would probably use the same set of words to describe PP. But PP has a more looped quality, less jammy, more psychedelic, if that makes any sanse. The sound is close enough that EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO BOUGHT THE LADDIO BOLOCKO SHOULD OWN BOTH THIS AND THE PSYCHIC PARAMOUNT FULL LENGTH.
Seriously. I got a chance to see Psychic Paramount a few months back, and I was transfixed, standing by the side of the stage, slack jawed and wide eyed. Loving it, but at the same time trying to figure out how the f-ck these guys make those sounds. It was really that amazing. They somehow managed to out heavy Khanate (who were also playing) while still managing to be dense and complex and weirdly catchy. They sound like a heavy metal This Heat!
The most amazing part was the band locked into an impossibly furious freak out, when the bass player just stopped playing and packed up his stuff and walked off stage. A few minutes later the drummer stopped, broke down his whole kit and then walked off stage. The whole while, the guitar player is at the front of the stage, in a manic, eyes-closed trance, unfurling massive super distorted loops and dense washes of sound that sounded like there was still a whole band up there. A few minutes later, the guitarist put his guitar down, and it continued to churn out this heavy sludgy psychedelic loop, the stage totally empty, but a massive crowd frozen in place, watching the guitar laying on the stage as if there was a full band up there. After about ten minutes a super cute anime looking girl, short skirt and pigtails walked up on stage and shut off the guitar and the crowd went apesh-t. That's what this cd sounds like. Exactly. And live! How the hell do they make these sounds LIVE?
Huge swaths of looped guitar, impossibly amazing drummer, maybe one of the best drummers I've seen/heard in ages, there's one track on here where the bass and guitar drop out completely and the drummer just GOES for a few minutees and he somehow stirs up a din that sounds as dense and full and freaked out as the whole band playing. Some tracks are just full on blasts of NOISE, wild and dense, thick swirls of psychedelic sound, freaked out and chaotic, but even at its most noisy it's still so musical. Loud, weird, repetitive, hypnotic, mesmerizing, so so so good!
Recorded live in 2002 in Europe. Packaged in a swank black digipak, it also includes a short film shot on tour that you can watch on your computer.
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the psychic paramount features Drew St.Ivany (guitar) and Ben Armstrong (bass) who originally met with public awareness in laddio bolocko (NYC). The group formed just five days before a scheduled tour of France and Italy in Nov/Dec. 2002 with original drummer tatsuya nakatani, prominently a free music improviser from NYC who has collaborated with numerous musicians including peter brotzmann, peter kowald, and ken vandermark. The music and performances of the tour were often chaotic and unpredictable lent by a sense of urgency and chance elements. These shows were documented resulting in the "Live 2002 the Franco-Italian Tour" CD which captures the birth of the group in raw, immediate form. Previously available as a Cdr on the bands Bewilderment and Illumination imprint, the new edition of "Live 2002" is packaged in a beautiful digipak and is enhanced with an eight minute Super 8 film shot by Aran Tharp.
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