Neptune - Neptune

- Limited to 500 copies on orange and brown marbled vinyl

From Jamaica Plain Massachussetts with a gnarled, home-made clatter and drone comes Neptune. Part sculptural art metallurgy project, part rock band (no, scratch that - ALL rock band), the three-piece formed initially to demonstrate, in an art gallery setting, the awesome crunk of band-leader Jason Sandford’s home-sculpted scrap metal instruments. Two world tours and one blistering album later, they’re now set to release two new full-lengths on Table of the Elements (home to their heroes Faust, Tony Conrad and John Cale amongst others). But not before this, the first recorded fruits of their unrelenting instinct for improvisation.

The album, featuring five tracks and running at a fraction over forty minutes in length, was recorded in collaboration with their friends Jessica Rylan (Can’t/Vampire Can’t), Donna Parker and Kevin Micka. Reminiscent of 70s/80s experimental post-prog innovators This Heat, the home-made electronics, found sounds and scrap metal are forged to create a familiar brand of searing, soaring, seething rock, played with virtuosity and gusto, yet with a sense of individuality inescapable in the shadow of the instruments’ creation.

With beautiful floral packaging designed by celebrated sleeve/poster artist and NME cartoonist Dave Bailey, and pressed on beautifully putrid orange and brown marbled vinyl, this improvised masterpiece is surely a contender for most collectible record of 2007. Here’s what Plan B magazine had to say:

“Plugs right into the mind's eye, this one, with images of rusting iron men ripping off their own arms and trashing the laboratory for kicks, jamming their fingers into the mains and rushing on the energy-overload feedback-bliss. Neptune have conjured a beautiful, exhilarating mess of clanging metallic doom, jagged drum embolisms and queasy electronic white-outs. From these primitive ingredients they create swooping bouts of 'roller-coaster-stomach'; a melancholy ride on a scrap-yard carousel; a disintegrating clunk-rock death scene; and - on the final 16 minute buzz-drone feedback-scream masterpiece - absolutely the most perfect downpour of eyes-rolling-into-the-back-of-your-head, bleeding overtone, trance-shriek to have been recorded for a very long time. If you've ever wished Wolf Eyes would just get over it and give us all a break, and Black Dice just got too much peach fuzz on their chins, it could be time to move to Neptune.”

Plan B, January 2007

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