| CD REVIEW Supenik |
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Band : Supenik When you think of Dartmoor, you would normally get a vision of a bleek prison in the middle of dark marches, and not so much of a high-octane good time Garage Rock band, but Darkmoor is exactly where Supenik hails from! Then still the trio of guitarist/ singer Joel Grey, bassist Dave Weymouth, and drummer Kev Marshall (who did their premiere gig on Sept. 17, 2005), drew on influences from the likes of Billy Childish, The Sonics, Fu Manchu, Sludgefeast, Cake, The Butthole Surfers, and Jon Spencer to distill their own version of fuzzy distorted Garage mayhem, something which was first displayed through the moonshine release of their late 2005 debut album Riff Power Revolution, issued through the newly founded Kuntz Lo-Fi Rock 'n' Roll imprint. Numerous (well...20 or so) UK gigs and three (short) Holland tours, occasions during which the band played alongside Brant Bjork, Electric Eel Shock, Truckfighters, Winnebago Deal, and Sludgefeast (with whom the band even had a split 7-inch EP on Collector Scum, a sub-division of Must Destroy Music; a maybe peculiar but nice detail about that EP was that each band brought their version of two songs of the other, plus one of their own), to name but a few. In late February 2007, the band (with an enhanced line-up through the addition of female Farfisa organ player C. Louisa) announced that they would soon be travelling to Swansea in Wales to record a new album...which was released on Kuntz later that year, December even witnessing the shooting of a video for the new album's track "Firebreathin'". Anyways, it's that same album Econ (short for Eclectic Compedium Of Noise) which now gets an official (re-)release through Lockjaw. I wish I could tell you about the difference between the band's older material and their current one with the addition of that organ, but I have no way to compare. One used to be able to listen to listen to clips from every track on the debut album, but for some reason the band has disabled that posibility. Nevertheless, I'm sure it (the organ) doés have a certain impact though, as it gives the material several touches it wouldn't have without it. In some songs you get a definite 60's Psychedelic feel, at other moments the melody of the song combines with the organ to create Devo-like madness...and the organ's presence gives quite a few of the songs a more Pop-oriented flavouring. If you (lucky kuntz!) happen to hàve that first album, you may wanna listen to a couple of songs on the new album first (then again, if you dó have that album, you're probably better acquainted with the band anyway, have most possibly gone to some of their gigs since, and have already been exposed to the new album...maybe even got it from Kuntz, eh?) by surfing to myspace.com/supenik, where the guys posted 3 songs. In addition to the influences above and the remarks already made, I might add that at one or two occasions in the 18 songs (good for a grand total of 61 minutes playing time) I head an additional fleeting influence from Jimi Hendrix! 90/100 Tony. |