mine's not a high horse

Terrific post over at OneLouder this morning, and one that sorta taps into my earlier frustration with the redundancy of 'independant voices' here in blogland. A good rule of thumb, I'm thinking, is if it makes you feel good, write about it, and if that's something that you think has been criminally overlooked up to this point, that much better.

Okay, now that I've curtailed some redundancy of my own, here's one for ya'll:

"Wires," by Voyager One

This may not have come up in the past, but I've got a huge, achilles-shaped weakness for the almighty drone. The shoegazer sound, for want of a better term. Maybe that came across in the Nels Cline or maybe Earlimart posts, I don't know, but the late '80s and early '90s were pretty much a golden age of effects pedals, and I loved 'em all. Ride, My Bloody Valentine, Swervedriver (to a point), more more more. Beat me over the head with that flanger pedal until my head pops and releases sparklers like one of those spores from the time-lapse National Geographic shows.

Anyway.

Yes, Voyager One. Great little band out of Seattle on the aptly named Loveless records. This is off their 2002 release "Monster Zero," and hear-tell they've since released a new record, but it's one that I think found them drifting more toward a rawer, garage boogie kind of sound (at least on the two songs I heard). But here's where I think they really tapped into not just the original guitar-meets-drugs formula, they dropped it into an electric blender until the fuse shorted out. Enormous squalls of noise threaten to overtake the vocals, but between the verses an extra flourish cuts through the haze, like a blast of heat lightning. It's like one of those beloved shoegaze bands from days of yore but this time they're dressed in silvery spacesuits, fighting to escape an arcade in a flash flood. Hold on, just five more minutes and you'll make high score.