WaterWays / Sons of Alpha Centauri / Hotel Wrecking City Traders - Split ...

Let’s go back to Downunder …I had briefly mentioned the split object of this post in my previous write-up about the recent release by Bro Fidelity Records involving Australian bands Hotel Wrecking City Traders and Spider Goat Canyon (HERE).

So time to go through it!
Recently the Australian label Bro Fidelity Records released this three-way split involving the Melbourne-based Wrecker brothers’ band Hotel Wrecking City Traders together with WaterWays, from USA, and Sons of Alpha Centauri, from UK.  This is certainly one of the top new releases for the label especially for the standing of the bands and musicians involved and for the ideal world-wide embrace that this split seems to enact.After the successful collaboration with Gary Arce of Yawning Man’s fame, back in 2011, Ben and Toby Wrecker had promised they would be doing something else with Arce. Well, they have only just started keeping the promise by means of this album which is cool soundwise as well as object-wise. Just look at the impressive care and beauty of this unique item, a deluxe tri-coloured heavyweight 12" vinyl where blue stands for WaterWays, red for Sons of Alpha Centauri and yellow for Hotel Wrecking City Traders. These distinctive colours also dominate in the cover arts for the American, European and Australasian versions of the release, respectively. If you go and have a look at the BroFidelity’s webpage (see below) you’ll see the details of such cool edition and the bonus features coming with it.

 Music now, and a few words about these bands collaborating with the Wrecker brothers. WaterWays is the newest project between Gary Arce and Mario Lalli (Fatso Jetson, Yawning Man, Desert Sessions … well, the man is an institution …) and also featuring Tony Tornay from Fatso Jetson on drums, and Abby Travis as vocalist. Abby is well known for a long series of electic performances and collaborations including those with monster bands Masters of Reality, Farflung, etc. Sons of Alpha Centauri, from UK, are a cool, dark instrumental prog rock act whose members are partly involved in Gary Arce’s other psych drone master project Yawning Sons.  As to the Hotel Wrecking City Traders duo, well, their elegant style in experimenting and jamming with ambient psychedelia, noise, desert rock vibes is by now well known and appreciated.

The three-way split is slightly over 35 minutes in length and is dominated by four tracks by WaterWays (“Piece of You”, “Queen”, “The Blacksmith” and “WaterWays”), followed by one suite for Sons of Alpha Centauri (simply called “27”) and closed by a +9 minutes-long suite for Hotel Wrecking City Traders (called Pulmo Victus). So it is probably a sort of hommage, and a most welcome one, to Gary and Mario’s new project. The WaterWays offering is permeated by a delightful, etereal sound drenched with light, psychedelic trippy vibes and sustained by the infectious groove of desert rock vibes. Abby’s voice is beautiful indeed. I had never heard it before, such a cool surprise! Also Abby’s duet with Mario Lalli’s low voice (probably him …) in the groove-laden opening track is intriguing. Abby’s singing is interlaced with the evolutions of Gary’s guitar and both unfold over the dynamic, mid- to up-tempo beating background driven by Marios’ bass and Tony’s measured but effective blows on the drums. The fourth and last track by WaterWays is maybe less “hard rocking”  than the previous ones and acts as a quite ethereal, almost romantic, careless poppy conclusion of this happy, Southern Californian dream before entering the powerful darker, definitely more metallic, colder sounds in Sons of Alpha Centauri’s instrumental suite 27.



This 27 suite is not a “normal” track. It had been originally recorded by Sons of Alpha Centauri as centerpiece for their 2007 self-titled debut album. But apparently this almost 9 minutes-long, fine track was too long for being featured in the album and eventually it was regretfully left aside. This version has been remastered for the purpose of the vinyl split.  Sons of Alpha Centauri build up their eclectic ballad around a syncopated, circular leading melody straying genres and equally oscillating between Joy Division-like sounds and post/desert rock vibes. The band like their pulsating bass accompanying the whole ballad, be it either when simple sounds of acoustic guitars are heard, like in the somber opening, or else when fuzzy or hard-beating, crunchy metallic riffs are employed or mournful organ-driven sounds are introduced.
After the dynamic evolutions in Sons of Alpha Centauri’s suite, it is the turn of Hotel Wrecking City Traders and their tricks for relaxing the listener’s mind and hooking his/her attention by means of their ability in creating expectation via their charming combination of psychedelia and soft noise.

The Wrecker brothers open their ballad Pulmo Victus with a slightly unsettling, drony background buzz which has a strong hypnotic effect like with didgeridoo. The pulsating yet delicate melody created by the (improvised?) jamming between riffs and drumming seems to almost physically dig its way through the background buzz in waves and only towards the end of this trippy ballad the melody seems to gain stronger energy for bursting out. It will die out swallowed by the drony buzz before fully exploding. Nothing tragic, through. The sensations conveyed are of laid back drowsiness like when lying under the shade in a very hot day, lulled by the buzz of chicadas and trying to find the energy for moving. And eventually falling back into peaceful inactivity, mmmmh …

Get hold of this gem via BroFidelity Records.    BroFidelity Records

Words: Marilena Moroni

WaterWays

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Sons of Alpha Centauri

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Hotel Wrecking City Traders

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N.B: Streaming …
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WaterWays - 'The Blacksmith'
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