International Hello - International Hello

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5...according to our Brian on Thu 08 Jul, 2010.

Well this is a right ace messy record. The first track just shits out of the speakers like The Heads or White Hills mixing it with early Butthole Surfers. An acid-fried psychedelic, squalling lo-fi punk splurge that almost certainly has a bit of driving Hawkwind sludge & insanity about it. I'm also getting a slightly similar vibe to that ace Hospitals album from a couple of years back, merely in the fierce near-collapsing derangement of it all. The brief closer on side one is equally volatile & unhinged. And terrifyingly wonderful. Side two kicks off at a more sedate pace, heady, distorted & wired space rock that immediately drags you in - fairly steady metronomic drums & a reassuringly safe bassline being the backdrop for some of the most thrillingly debased & wonky psych guitar & distorted, gibbering vocals. I love the sludgy production on this record, it drips with deviancy & menace. Closing with '8 Seconds', there's no let up in the general psychotic mood of this record yet the driving intensity lets up oh-so very slightly. This one sounds like it's been recorded in the cloakroom next to the stage so it's even more drunken & indecipherable than ever but sounds totally thrilling to the max nevertheless. Absolutely possessed mentalists this band are - if you dig all this new wave of scuzzy psych, make this your #1 shopping cart addition this week....

International Hello is the perfection of California psychedelicrock in all its ecstatic glory. Grady Runyan sguitar playing is as fantastic, spacey and heavy as ever,as is Scott Derr s always-pertinent bass throb. Drummerand singer Rubin Fiberglass is just perfect as a screamingmaniac who can actually keep time while Doug Pearson selectronics consistently enhance the dominant power-triorock that swirls in the sky like some kind of creation myth.In case you don t recognize the names, these guys were theprime movers and shakers behind the band Monoshock.Does it sound like them? Yeah but it s way back there,and this is about a new place they re going. And it s good.You ll see.Debut recording from former members ofMonoshockThe perfection of California psychedelicrock in all its ecstatic glory LP includes free digital download coupon [Monoshock were] three of the most clued-in musicalminds I ve ever met or observed, and they breathed inand coughed out a whole host of killer influences. Startingwith the most obvious: Hawkwind, The Stooges, Can,Black Flag, Pere Ubu, Pink Fairies, Von Lmo, the MC5 andChrome. Later in their flickeringly brief career they trendedmore toward heavy Japanese-style PSF psychedelia andoutré space rock experimentation a la F/i, Vertical Slit andany number of barefoot Germans from the 1970s. I m notsure where they d have ended up had the band not peteredout in 1995 it appears from the direction they were trendingon... that it was into a heads-down, dark and deep spasticnoise murk rather than back to the bull-rushing primitivefuzz-punk squeal of these earlier recordings. Jan Hinman, Agony Shorthand

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