goat (the band)

Posted by adaug (A) on September 1, 2012 at 17:11:03

here is a cool new band that may appeal to those with elecectic tastes. upbeat rock/world music. the below review by aquarius records in SF (great mail order place!) does it more justice than i could. hopefully the sound clips at the bottom work here. if not, go to the aquarius site.

enjoy

GOAT World Music (Rocket) cd 17.98
"We've been waiting for this one for ages. After an insanely limited 7" single, which was so scarce, no one we know has actually ever even seen a copy, let alone bought one, and a teaser video on YouTube, and all sorts of rumors about this Swedish band who were influenced by African music and voodoo and came from some mysterious village no one had ever heard of, well, needless to say, we were DYING for the full length, and it does not disappoint.
So the story goes, in a tiny village in Sweden called Korpolombolo, there has existed a band called Goat for generations, this is just the first incarnation of the band that has captured any of their music on tape. Supposedly the village was cursed by some sort of voodoo witch doctor, who was put to death for being a witch, and introducing voodoo worship to this tiny village. It only takes one Google search to discover that there is no such village, or so say the skeptics, but we choose to BELIEVE, and that village is just so obscure and tiny and tucked away, that it has even escaped the notice of Google. And whether it's true or not, the IDEA of it definitely influences the music of Goat, whose sound most definitely has a serious African vibe, the percussion, the vocals, it's heady concoction of wild psychedelic space rock, all driving krautrock rhythms, and tangled squalls of electric guitar freakout, and dense rhythmic percussion, and almost double dutch sounding vocals. When we first threw this on, our first impression was that it sounded like a weird mix of Konono No.1, The Heads and (believe it or not) the Go! Team, which even now, after constant listening doesn't seem that far off.

The tracks are dense, and psychedelic, heavy, fuzzy, definitely Stooges-y at times, Hawkwindy at others, several of the tracks display a Miles Davis style grooviness, sounding like a SUPERCHARGED ultra heavy Bitches Brew, others pound away sounding exactly how you might imagine some ancient voodoo ritual would sound reimagined by some modern Swedish psychedelic space rock outfit. "Goatman" (from the 7") is the perfect intro, after a strange sample, and some tribal drumming, the guitars come cascading in, wild squalls of psychedelic wah guitar, and keening high end wails, then the vocals come in, belted out over the fuzzed out bass, the percussion wild and groovy, it's total Swedish Afro-psych, or something, if this one track stretched out and filled up the whole record, it STILL would have been Record Of The Week.

The band do have a surprisingly broad palette though, whether it's the subdued acid folk Appalachia of "Goathead", or the organ driven Afro-groove of the appropriately titled "Disco Fever", with its percussion heavy funk swaddled in progged out organs, and then there's the equally funky "Golden Down", that sounds like some Southeast Asian Sublime Frequencies jam, but here cranked up, the guitars super distorted, the bass dangerously buzzy, the sound blissfully in-the-red, the drums wild and loose, the ultimate heavy psychedelic dance band, for those three minutes you can almost imagine these guys jamming out at the edge of the world in some alternate dimension seedy dive, with a dancefloor full of damned souls. Sweaty and swaggery and fierce as fuck. "Let It Bleed" delivers a more laid back groove, and even introduces some saxophone, which gives it the vibe once again of some psych-ed up Ethiopian groove. "Run To Your Mama" melds serious Sabbath-y riffage to some wild tribal percussion, and wailed vox, while "Goatlord" unfurls some dark psych folk, replete with super distorted heavy psych leads, over urgent strumming and cooed echo drenched vox, sounding a bit like a more psychedelic Comus in fact.

And finally, the record finishes off with the epic "Det Som Aldrig Forandras", with its bagpipe sounding opening, that quickly explodes into a heady psychedelic groove, droned out and hypnotic, the sort of jam that should/could have been ENDLESS, but instead, works its way back to a seriously heavy psychedelic coda, bookending the brief 3 minute opener, again, the sort of jam they could have stretched out for another twenty minutes, and we would have been in heaven, but the fact that it loops back around to the beginning, only adds a strange sort of endless ritual vibe to the proceedings, and makes it that much easier to play it all over again. And again. And again. Forever.

Super swank, die cut, eye popping artwork too, on the cd and lp both! "

MPEG Stream: "Diarabi"
MPEG Stream: "Goatman"
MPEG Stream: "Golden Dawn"
MPEG Stream: "Det Som Aldrig Forandras / Diarabi"
-andre d

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Topic - goat (the band) - adaug 17:11:03 09/1/12 (2)

RE: goat (the band) - Frank_Locke 18:10:58 09/2/12 (1)

RE: goat (the band) - adaug 04:51:10 09/3/12 (0)

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