Moonflare - All the World is Bright With Joy and Musical Delight (Cubic Pyramid CD-R)

Courtesy of new Lisbon-based label Cubic Pyramid, this disc is a nice little foray into some twisted avenues of psychedelic scree, presenting a fuzzed out offering that has some balls behind its burned out walls. Only two tracks here, but the first is longer than an episode of Doug, so what's the worry?

Seems like both tracks are untitled too, so you get to just throw it on without much thought--though some might argue the extended title cancels that out a tad... fear not though, this stuff isn't nearly as quaint as it's name suggests, instead presenting a minor beat in its opening before shifting gears toward some droned out mish-mash of blown blacks. Not so much a dark foray, but it gets noisy enough, moving from Vibracathedral-oriented twitter to attempts at Hototogisu rumble. And despite it's not really making it to either the disc does have a little something going on if I do say so myself. Real sincere stuff that has an organic flow and a pretty together atmosphere, which is nice to hear from first timers and pros alike. Guitar and vocalizings combine Skaters-shades into a real solid sound that at times even reminds me of some rundown cover of a Double Leopards track or something. Only not. A little nastier sounding really, and less mobile capabilities. The focus is solid here though, and these guys manage to control the general shape of the whole thing well without letting it get out of hand too quickly. Well played folks, well played.

The kicker is the palette cleanser, a nearly six-minute guitar diddle that's got some clues bending about it like some serpentine truth module. Weird and lilting and really nothing like the previous track. In my book it's actually the more effective and weirder route, but what's my book got to do with it. True be told it's a perfect bookend to the fiesta beforehand. Groovy stuff. Limited to 50 though, and nice.