This CD marks the first time I have ever been sent a record wrapped in two slices of bread to make a musical sandwich. Also, the the bread is of such industrial construction that a few weeks later it still hasn’t gone mouldy; just a little bit hard.
It also came with some very cool artwork on a small poster that made me want to listen to it. Add to that the fact that Mind brains feature some former members of Olivier Tremor Control, Of Montreal and Dark Meat and this is one record I needed to hear.
The opening Happy Stomp comes on like a Sacred Harp tune on bad acid or like a reasonably innocuous egg salad sandwich on rye until the spaceship noises come in to let you know it is about to get a bit out there. Out where? Well, into the mad glitch noises and keyboards stabs of Body Horror being sung at you with a dis-embodied computer treated vocal that makes a well odd sandwich of Jalapeno Pepper tapenade with honey roasted pumpkin and celery on pumpernickel.
The Morning Before The Morning Before Dawn brings dark foreboding swirls of keyboards with sweet and devilish vocals like it should be in the worst kind of horror movie served with a black pudding and cauliflower on salted cornbread as the keyboards lay waste to your mind.
Strange Remember goes back to the sacred Harp style vocals and an almost Alice Coltrane-style backing with hints of the Polyphonic Spree. It feels like a carefully-layered three cheese and onion chutney on brown sandwich as the doomy keyboards repeat on you and take it into another realm of deliciousness.
A strange honking noise presages the opening of Whistle Tips before a range of odd sounds come in and compete to derange your senses like a Fly Agaric with poppy seed paste and black truffle on pumpernickel sandwich might.
The Era Of Late Heavy Bombardment is trip into the heart of diseased brains and disembodied vocals and what sound like backwards guitars and other strange noises making it like Peanut butter with artichoke and biltong on laver bread. It’s dense and unsettling in a sort of cool way.
Sea Shore Minor takes us out on a skiff into the sound of the music from the King and I gone on an acid trip. It’s out there and yet familiar sounding best served with Smoked Salmon and pesto in an onion platzel with the weird bleeping noises and cymbal crashes taking your mind of the haunting choir of scabrous angels threatening to whisk you far from the safety of the sea shore and into the maelstrom that never really arrives.
The album closes with Bouncy Clock: a wonky dance tune with krautrock overtones mixed with 70’s sci-fi soundtrack organ noises and other weird bits. It’s the Bratwurst and sauerkraut with candied orange peel in a huge pretzel, messy and difficult to eat, but sort of irresistible or so this vegetarian imagines as we walk into the forgotten spaces that Mind Brain open up for us this Hamuary the 666th 1945 which the band insist is the release date rather than the actual date this weird and wonderful album actually arrives on.
For lovers of odd, compelling and ever so slightly bonkers electronically altered music everywhere.
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