Let’s start with the Spider Goat Canyon vs. Hotel Wrecking City Traders - Japan Tour Split, involving like-minded Melbourne-based Spider Goat Canyon (SGC), an independent instrumental trio with Steve Brick on guitar, Josh Beagley on bass and Deryck Hunt on drums.
Spider Goat Canyon started making their eclectic, improvised-sounding noise since 2003 and released several albums including a split with Fire Witch, related with Bro Fidelity Records as well as with that other way cool Aussie label WeeEmptyRoom. The relationship of SGC with HWCT also includes the involvement of Deryck and Josh in the conjuct four-piece, two full drum kits/ bass/ guitar, improvised act Daggers Mid Flight.
This SGC-HWT split CD is in honor of a tour the two bands undertook in Japan during November 2012 together with the Japanese instrumental psych prog rock band Teratova, related to Birushanah. The bands involved in the split are linked by long-lived friendship and musical collaboration. So the conjunct November Japan tour was seen as well worth having “ a limited edition release (…) as a memento that embodies that spirit of brotherhood and friendship”. All this had been announced by Ben in an interview I had the pleasure to do with him (HERE). I like to recall that most pleasant interview also because there he explained the background of this release quite in detail: a release completely managed by the bands. Total 100% DIY setup starting with a mobile recording setup for capturing sounds during one day in HWCT’s jam room (in late May 2012), and ending with the experience of mixing and mastering by themselves with the aid of skilled friends. The limited edition CD was then officially released in conjuction with the Japanese tour and is available via Bro Fidelity Records.
The CD comprises three tracks lead by Spider Goat Canyon and two tracks lead by Hotel Wrecking City Traders, all in all a most charming and intense jamming trip distracting you from the petty issues of everyday life for about 1 hour and 16 minutes.
The Spider Goat Canyon part is monumental and extremely varied in its development via the three tracks Brotherhood (11:13), Batch 18 (4:33) and the epic suite I Draw The Line At The Clarinet (29:57). Such sequence of tracks builds up a complex, multi-layered sonic architecture which is successfully completed by the performance of Hotel Wrecking City Traders via their final suites simply called I (13:16) and II (17:02).
Spider Goat Canyon like to drag the listener into a variety of moods and atmopheres by following a classical “full-empty” dialectic scheme best developed in their final long epic suite. Their first track, Brotherhood, is a long atmospheric introduction made of a combination of delicate, ethereal, almost exotic sounds and effects that progressively grow in intensity and help recalling wide open spaces where humans are like ants (e.g., the immensity of the desert or of the Asian steppe …). The “voice” of the guitar is made more by vibrated picks of the chords than actual riffs. Drumming enters rather late and imposes either ritualistic pace or bizarre patterns to the leading melody which grows in waves like in Ravel’s Bolero. The sum of all these sounds makes up a majestic ambient psychedelic melody. The psychedelic, mind-warping effect of the overall sound is further marked by the ossessive repetition of the melody like in a broken disk, at the end of the track. You don’t realize it immediately …Track Batch 18 is a sharp, brutal wake up from the previous numb psychedelic emptiness. Batch 18 is fully packed with noise, distortion, and blows, a charge of molasse-heavy, raw, sludgy-doom riffs, frenzied drumming, deafening cymbals This is war, this is a charge of a tribal horde, Genghis Khan’s hordes if you like to go on with the image of the Asian steppe evoked before. In its relative brevity this track includes tempo changes and is closed by the echoes of sabbathian riffs dying out in the new wave of emptiness. From that very cosmic emptiness bass and guitar vibrations will rise and grow during the charming Hawkwind-like space psychedelic jamming that opens the final impressive track by Spider Goat Canyon.
This suite is a sequence of steep mood changes, of ups and downs, of “full” and “empty” narrative performed by an extremely multilayered and multifaceted sound. Here the band and the listener travel together across genres, tempos, atmospheres, crushing wall of sounds and balming silence, twisted, syncopated avantgarde dynamics, tight and even refreshing poppy rocking rhythms, ethereal shoegaze, sideral space doom, rough, heavy and distorted riffing, post-metal dissonance, hypnotic krautrock vibes, abrasive chaotic noise …
At the end you really need a detoxification for returning back to normal perception or just to relax your mind after the vortex of emotions, moods, noise, excess. Hotel Wrecking City Traders will help you by means of their contribution, tracks I and II, occupying the last 30 minutes of the album. If compared to the sonic seesaw before, Hotel Wrecking City Traders’ melodic lines and sound seem to be linear and almost minimalistic. However the soothing lightness of HWCT’s jamming does not mean barren simplicity. Instead it is perfect amalgamation of layered sounds, effects and tricks by the two brothers molded into an elegant polyhedric melody. And this is caught especially when returning to these two tracks in subsequent times. The first track is lead by a strong tension conveyed by the growing energy of the drumming coupled with the gentle to vigorous sound of the guitar, all building up a stream of highly atmospheric psychedelic desert rock vibes. The leitmotiv is further developed in the second 17 minutes-long track where atmospheres are even more dilated and ethereal when the tribal drumming is not taking over. In this second track the leading melody has a more exotic, Asian feeling and a more contemplative character. The bursts of the drums plus cymbals are almost sudden and concentrated in the central and final part of the long track. You can feel the increasing or variable intensity of the drumming as the driving force or the valve for fueling the intensity of the guitars. But the other way round may happen. The brothers are running after one another … The final part of this highly hypnotic suite is dominated by some awesome multilayered, interlaced guitar patterns with tones varying from acute to extremely raw and dull. Guitars and percussions are slowly ballooning till they die out in the void.
So in this part of the split my/your mind cools down and gets haunted by subtle oscillations in the sounds that might be like echoes of the extreme changes in tempo and genres heard before. Sounds start as essential and then tend to grow and stack and merge into a “calm” boiling mass that will menace overflowing but will never do it. You just have to let yourself get soaked by this enchanting music and enjoy listening to these two brothers creating their continuously changing soundscapes with rumbling, gentle or weird, exotic sounds. If you are not in a hurry or a “purist” and you like psychedelia, doom, post-metal, post-rock, shoegaze, experimentation, laid-back desert vibes, the freshness of improvisation between like-minded musicians, these bands and this monumental album are definitely for you.
Experience the tasty fruits of this impressive collaboration between Spider Goat Canyon and Hotel Wrecking City Traders in this new CD available via BroFidelity Records.
Words: Marilena Moroni
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Bro Fidelity Records