ALBUM REVIEW: The Myrrors – Solar Collector
Courtesy of Dave Franklin
★★★★☆
Whilst so much music made today has a very obvious sense of purpose; be it an eye for commercial success, an obvious fashion statement or just a thinly veiled re-hashing of the bands influences, Solar Collector is more about a sense of location. And that location is a combination of their immediate Tucson desert surroundings and a wider geographic co-ordinate that seeks to describe their place in the universe. Ambitious themes indeed, but all the better for tackling such a concept. And this is a concept album, or at least an album of concepts with each of the four instrumental tracks forging sonic soundscapes around a vague theme yet somehow connected in their scope and grandeur.
Musically it lies beyond easy definition, that is to say it is an impossible task to convert what is taking place musically into the medium of written language. It is audaciously psychedelic and sonically estranged. It is hypnotic almost to the point of being repetitive, but only almost! It somehow manages to take the cold robotics of Krautrock (think Neu! or Can in their less jazz fuelled wig-outs) and re-invents them through a warm drug filled haze liberally drawing in swampy blues, acid-rock, cosmic jamming, garage experimentation and the music of choirs of angels strung out on Peyote.
It is the epitome of everything that is missing in modern music. Through these elegant, wild and primordial sounds The Myrrors are being wonderfully indulgent, totally anti-commercial and fantastically brave in pursuing a path that will leave many confused and defeated, fallen and bloodied by the wayside. And that almost enhances the experience, that rush of elitism that all good music snobs get off on, knowing that you are part of only a small gang of people that get it. Totally challenging, wonderfully rewarding, job done!
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