Electric Octopus – St. Patrick’s Cough
Electric Octopus – St. Patrick’s Cough
Interstellar Smoke Records
Release Date: 15.07.22
Running Time: 01:11:07
Review by Dark Juan
7/10
As I hide, remaining cunningly concealed from the retina-crisping, radiation gushing horror in the skies above Dark Juan Terrace, being within and cowering behind the chaise-longue and the remaining Smellhounds, I find myself ruminating, dreaming about my past and wondering if I really shouldn’t have shagged that entire Russian convent (including Mother Superior, who was superior in age, and other things too) in 1994, and whether this heat belching, skin frying ball of superheated gases is here to punish me for my sins. Which would be shameful, considering that I HAVE NOT ACTUALLY FINISHED SINNING YET and still have much to do in the name of Satan regarding the defilement of the children of Christ, Yahweh and Allah and turning them on to the righteous and rather more fun Left-Hand Path in the service of the Horned One. Via the medium of their sexual organs. And what I’m going to do with them.
Yes, I am Dark Juan and I am from the North of England, which means it’s too bloody hot and (horror of horrors) I actually have tanned arms. I didn’t want them to be tanned, but for some unaccountable reason the sun was shining in Wales, where I have recently been on holiday. Only your favourite Hellpriest could show up in Wales during the midst of the first heatwave that the hardy Welsh (who are, let’s face it, rather more used to it pissing down fairly constantly. There’s a reason Wales is so green) have experienced / suffered in a good two thousand years. I avoided sunburn on the back of my neck by a mere whisker but now I have a healthy glow. I don’t want a fucking healthy glow. I want pallid, consumptive and vampiric. Or at least anaemic. Sun tans are for vitamin freaks and people who exercise, not gothic pseudo-Satanists.
So, from deep within my hive of villainy I bring you words about Electric Octopus, a trio of intrepid souls who are generally based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. These three dauntless gents have brought us “St. Patrick’s Cough”, a record bearing the same name as a well in Holywell, nestled between the craggy mountains between Counties Fermanagh and Leitrim, which is incidentally where this album was recorded.
Opening tune ‘Turnkey’ amply sets the tone for the release as a whole, being a wholly experimental, instrumental trip through the outer reaches of the psychedelic. Unusual time signatures, tempos and instrumentation abound as the music leaps from star to galaxy to nebula and back again, and this is also true of every song on the album. There are no vocals to distract you from the musical soundscapes or the astral travelling that you’ll be doing while you listen. This is a record best heard with cans on, though. It really benefits from having that close in listening experience where you can have a more focused appreciation of the music of Electric Octopus.
Nowhere is this more ably demonstrated than on the 13-minute PLUS centerpiece of the album ‘A2enmod’ (which is a shell script provided on Debian, and Debian-based Linux systems for quickly enabling extension modules of the Apache web server, Linux fact fans! Dark Juan has no fucking idea what that previous sentence even means. Don’t bother even trying to explain it to me. My brains are already running out of my ears from the heat) which languidly strokes its way through endless clouds of interstellar gas before speeding up a bit, based on a simple, revolving bass riff and encompassing the out-there inventiveness of Hawkwind and splicing it with the electronic atmospherics of Jean-Michel Jarre and the idiosyncratic pop sensibilities of Air. I thought that a thirteen minute track would grate after a mere eight minutes or so, but it passes pleasantly and without outstaying its welcome.
‘St. Peter’ is the fifth song on the record, and apes Pink Floyd with the guitar until it stops being quite so linear and rigid, although the undercutting electronic swishing and atmosphere are reminiscent of Ozric Tentacles, gentle rimshots underpinning a dreaming wispiness as the song draws to its conclusion. ‘Focal Swan’ sounds almost Japanese initially, making your correspondent imagine pristine running water underneath an exquisitely carved wooden bridge in an Oriental garden, surrounded on all sides by cherry trees and blossom and perfectly raked gravel in Feng Shui patterns that must not be disturbed. There are wind chimes waving gently in the slowly gathering wind as a cloud comes over the garden and your protagonist slips through the garden, paying less attention to the splendour and the sun retreats behind the cloud and rain threatens. Getting indoors and closing the door on the garden, your protagonist looks out as the rain starts to fall and thanks whatever deity he chooses to follow that he wasn’t caught outside in it and thinking sadly on the plight of those less fortunate than he.
‘Lémon Rage’ meanders along its own little path, becoming progressively more jazzy as the song progresses, with glockenspiel chuntering its way through another bassline that repeats and repeats as a solid backbone and the title track starts off with a decidedly Indian hippy flavour, all tie-dye and patchouli oil sitar twanging away over a bassline that is relaxed indeed.
However, I have issues (we know, the whole Ever Metal team shout at once). While I deeply appreciate the improvisational quality of the album (and indeed, extended and improvised jams are very much Electric Octopus’ thing by their own admission), they rarely change the tempo and speed of a jam when they have settled into it and the normal velocity they employ could charitably be described as relaxed at best and somnolent at worse. The band need to vary their tempos to add a bit more interest for the listener. YAWN would be a very good band to compare themselves against as they too delve into the arcane worlds of the improvisational and psychedelic. And the songs at times just follow the same pattern where they start gently, do a bit of astral wandering, come back to Earth with a jolt, wake up and get a bit more adamant about things but then peter back out into contemplative navel-gazing. And there’s only so much fucking sitar I can take without wanting to murder the twanging bastard playing said instrument by wrapping it around their cranium.
I don’t like sitars. They make my teeth ache.
The production on the album is excellent, however. Every instrument and sound is easily heard and nothing overpowers anything else. I particularly enjoyed the electronically altered didgeridoo throughout “Consonance” as it added a new dynamic to a very earthy instrument. However, I am going on record and stating that this album is FAR TOO LONG. You become exhausted by the tenth song, especially considering there are two songs that comprise over 23 minutes of the runtime just by themselves. Also, this is another album I have managed to choose to review that has nothing really to do with Metal besides sharing Psychedelia as a component of the sound. Hence, it will be losing the obligatory mark all non-Metal releases get on my watch unless they are genre-defyingly superb. An unintended (I’m sure) bit of comedy is in here as well, ‘Sunthing’ reminding me uncomfortably of Red Dwarf’s Dave Lister and his early band, Smeg and The Heads and their song ‘Om’. Smeg and The Heads were composed of two thirds of Carcass when they appeared on Red Dwarf, dontcha know…
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System awards Electric Octopus 7/10 for a very good record that is unfortunately unexceptional, and outstays its welcome by a considerable margin. Quality control needs to become a factor as the noodling and the exploration of the universe outside of conscious thought start to grate after an hour. Also a mark has been deducted for the lack of Metal contained within.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Turnkey
02. Leighton Buzzard
03. Restaurant Banking
04. A2enmod
05. St. Peter
06. Focal Swan
07. Lémon Rage
08. Universal Knife
09. St. Patrick’s Cough
10. Consonance
11. You Have to Be Stupid to See That
12. Sunthing
13. Town
LINE-UP:
Guy Hetherington – Drums
Tyrell Black – Guitar
Dale Hughes – Bass and keyboards
LINKS:
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