Kill West: heavy psychedelic rock with arm-shaping rhythms

Title: Gush

Label: Stolen Body 

They are often described as a new drone-rock band from Buenos Aires but I’m not sure that I’d agree…based upon this new album at any rate. To my ears, that’s not the story at all. To best describe the music, allow me to paint a picture for you. The deeper we get, possibly the better you’ll get the creative style of the band.

We’ve got a outfit in which your ears are asked to wade through a syrup-laden, repetitive beat that is blues-based and just sounds like there is miles and miles of hair involved: on heads, on faces and probably everywhere else. Also clouds of cigarette smoke. Plus other varieties of smoke. Nodding heads. Closed eyes. Posters of Woodstock on the wall, the top left hand corner detached and folded down. The odd sweaty headband, a few runaway beads. Stick-on chics making abstract shapes with their arms. Then, when a more driving beat is found, nothing too fast but definitely insistent and unavoidable, you’ve got lots of synchronised head nodding with fast fingers scouting fret boards and frowned concentration as if this is the most important thing they’ve ever down ever in the world…ever. Sometimes you have reverb-laden guitar solos that take the player out to the stars where he sits awhile on a comet and plays…just to enhance his karma for a while. Then it’s back to earth and more head nodding.

Are you getting a picture here? There’s a lot of retro rock on this disc that many late 60s fans will just love. I’m not too sure about the lead singer’s insistence that he sings through a long plastic pipe – well, it sounds like that – because that disengages the listener from the music but the rest of this CD begs to be consumed. This is music to live in. To occupy. To die in.