Andrew Perry / Dead Wood - The Sweetest Meat

The 'drone' tag is rarely this self-descriptive, but on The Sweetest Meat Britain's Andrew Perry and Adam Baker (Dead Wood, also runs Dirty Demos) hypnotically drift their way through three utterly miasmal meditations. Opener 'The Presentation' starts off shimmering and pretty but bends towards the macabre once the devilish axe rumble kicks in, sort of like a more meandering Birchville Cat Motel recording. Pretty riveting subject matter for the drone genre, I'd say. 'The Shove,' meanwhile, brings in a healthy chunk of evolving noise, but it is the 'The Opening,' which meshes dark, field recording ambience with the majestic droning of an electronic tampura, that truly marks this record's finest moment. The track's distant sonic rubble somehow melds perfectly with the traditional Eastern sound; turns out India invented and perfected 'drone' music centuries before us miserable Westerners started screwing around with reverb knobs. No wonder 'The Opening' is a cut above.