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Chalaque, "Sounds From the Other Ideology"
A raw live recording from earlier this year, Chalaque's main man Nick Mitchell performs here with Eric Hardiman (Century Plants, Rambutan et. al.) on bass and Pascal Nichols on drums. Essentially a live on stage improvisation, the trio bounce off each other perfectly and manages to grasp that tenuous balance between experimentalism and pure unadulterated rock and roll.
Consisting of two side-long pieces that are each made up of numerous, interlocking improvisations, there definitely a roughness to this recording, which captures crowd noise and is occasionally a bit overloaded by the intensity of the sound. This is not overly surprising, given that it is based on a hand-held recorder in the venue, but it also gives a primal, intense edge to the music that helps far more than it hurts it.
The lead off of "Simple Mathematics" focuses on Mitchell's rapid, noodling solos that manage to just be the right kind of sloppy, as Hardiman's overdriven bass and Nichol’s sharp, ragged drums propels everything along rapidly. With its changing paces and shifting focuses, with the guitar going into sludgy, noise territory and the bass picking up the melodic slack, it does get a certain jam session vibe to it. Thankfully, the improvisations feel much more like early King Crimson than modern Phish.
On the flip side, things are a little looser and more experimental feeling as a whole. The overdriven bass and clattering drum solos that introduce "Toeing the Water of a Cinematic Absence" make this apparent right from the start. Eventually the rapid drums and basic, but powerful bass line come together and restrain the guitar somewhat, even with its wah-wah heavy leads threatening to go off on their own tangents. About a third of the way through the whole song seems to falls apart into a lumbering mass of ramshackle drums and feedbacking guitar. Slowly, but surely, the trio reshape this chaos into a powerful wall of hard driving psychedelic rock that would make Hawkwind jealous.
With its lo-fi recording and improvisational nature, Sounds From the Other Ideology has a clearly wild, chaotic quality to it that gives it a sense of immediacy and intensity. Never does it sound directionless or self indulgent, as can often happen in performances of this nature, it instead uses the sonic warts and technical limitations to its best advantage. When things get messy, it is glorious, but things never go to far out of hand, and the group always manages to reign things in brilliantly.
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