The Goslings - Grandeur Of Hair

Label: aRCHIVE
Year: 2006

Try playing the following records simultaneously and at top volume: Melvins "Bullhead", Bardo Pond "Amanita", Butthole Surfers "Rembrandt Pussyhorse", Khanate "Things Viral" (Khanate's James Plotkin mastered this record, coincidentally enough), Earth "Earth 2", and Spacemen 3 "For All The Fucked-Up Children Of The World". See what happens.
Or play this album by itself. Also at top volume. Away from children or pets. It's a warm bath of all enveloping heavy noise, and it's fucking righteous.
On this record husband and wife duo Max and Leslie Soren augment their sound with a cast of drummers and additional guitars. Joined by Adel Souto (Timescape Zero/Hangman, Violent Deed, None Dare Call It Treason), Neddal Ayad (The Does), Brendan Grubb, and Paul Leroy, the band manage to humanize the pulsing overloaded drone of their music. With a lo-fi approach there can be no taming sounds this large and wild. Rough edges are not only encouraged, they become part of the instrumentation. Not that these are shapeless jams mind you, all of the compositions on this record harken back to distinctive musical mileposts, like riffs, refrains, and harmony. Noise is wielded over top of mammoth low end churns to amass the grit and grime into a vaguely recognizable blackened smear across your speakers. Pretty music twisted into a gnarled ball.

DL