Birds Of Maya - Ready to Howl

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4...according to our Business Lady on Thu 10 Jun, 2010.

More filthy dirge from the Richie Records roster, this time from Birds Of Maya. Don't know anything about these guys but I'm pretty pleased with what I'm hearing right about now. It kicks off the three day weekend on Friday (it's a three sided LP entitled Friday, Saturday and Sunday) with stupidly sludgy psych blues riffage accompanied by a barely audible vocal scowl that slowly evolves into the clattering's of a full band going at it pure lo-fi garage rock style! Part Stooges, part Beefheart madness, part blues rock sludge, part good time garage rock fun, Birds of Maya certainly know how to make an entertaining racket. Enhanced by a minuscule recording budget (sounds like it was recorded on a Fisher Price tape deck) and amateurish noise rock playing skills 'Ready To Howl' does exactly what the title suggests and is all the better for it. Amazing bluesy dirt rock!

Here it is. It's the most ambitious TestosterTunes release to date: a 3-song, double-LP by the three men of Philadelphia's BIRDS OF MAYA. It's called Ready To Howl and it's the soundtrack to an upcoming feature length film of the same name. Formed in 2002, Birds of Maya is the finest meat n potatoes neanderthal rock group operating today, and they're undoubtedly the outfit most committed to creating throbbing, thoroughly relentless, blues-based hard rock. Astute listeners will note nods to the fried power-rock of Split-era Groundhogs or the relentless garage mayhem of High Rise recorded under claustrophobic sub-Funhouse decadence. Anyone with ears will hear fried-Hendrixisms all over this thing.

Ready To Howl, the film, deals with one dude's struggles in- and outside of polite society. According to the producer, "the order of events is something like... getting off of work, partying, a parking lot bottle fight with a marine, driving drunk, the purchase of a deadly snake for purposes of revenge, hitchhiking, off road driving, car accident, the folly of vindictiveness, and finally a physical and metaphorical ascent to the highest point of the mountain." The soundtrack follows the same line, with album sides tracking Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. This is only BIRDS OF MAYA's second vinyl offering, and it's looooong overdue.

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