Blue Sausage Infant – Flight Of The Solstice Queens (CD, Zero Moon)
Posted: May 25th, 2010, by Justin SnowApparently this Blue Sausage Infant dude, Chester Hawkins, has been around the noise scene for a while, already having played with major hitters like Christopher Willits and Strotter Inst. My apologies to you all for not passing along this awesomeness sooner.
I can’t review this guy’s record and not talk about his name, so I might as well get that out of the way. Honestly, Blue Sausage Infant is probably one of the grossest band names I’ve ever heard. When he contacted me to review his new record, I almost didn’t even listen to it because I thought there’s no possible way I could like the music made by someone called Blue Sausage Infant. Luckily, I was open minded enough (and he seemed cool, writing a friendly personalized message) that I thought, sure, why the fuck not. Just give it a listen. Guys, it would have been a goddamn tragedy if I skipped over Blue Sausage Infant because Flight Of The Solstice Queens is really, REALLY fucking good.
The music isn’t as intensely fucked up or disgusting as the name implies. It’s not some twisted Gnaw Their Tongues horrorcore, it’s not Locust style hyper grindcore, it’s (surprisingly enough) some strange alchemic psychnoise krautdrone.
The opener “Gezundheit!” is about as bizarre as it gets, with a children’s TV show sounding happy time theme song playing over people fake sneezing and complaining they need more nasal decongestant. The rest of the album is a little more straightforward, by which I just mean you don’t feel like you’re tripping balls while watching Lidsville.
The songs are seriously all over the place. It’s all ambient static weirdness on “Locust Of Control.” “Ashtray Man” is just insane, a fast paced psych freakout where the guitars aren’t chugging along with killer riffs or doing the solo noodling thing, they’re just squawking and squealing like a broken electronic parrot. Fuck, maybe it is some electronics shit and not guitars. You can’t even tell.
“Space” opens with a wall of abrasive panning feedback that turns your speakers white just before they melt into a puddle of Alex Mack. It morphs into an unsettling blood boiling drone while a guy comes in spelling out some secret code, the sort of thing you’d hear on a numbers station except not numbers. Creepy as hell, let me tell you. “Radiant Arc,” one of my favorites, gets in a rad as fuck groove, somehow both chill & rocking, and stays there the entire time with droning organ melodies and intermittent squelches of electronics. I could just listen to that jam for the entire album, eyes closed, head keeping in time with the propulsive beat, and letting the CEV take over.
Flight Of The Solstice Queens was probably the last thing I expected to hear from a guy named Blue Sausage Infant but damn if it’s not better than anything I imagined. It’s super cohesive (especially for being so fucking genre scattered) and works perfectly for pretty much every situation you’ll find yourself in.
Justin Snow
Justin resides on Lon Lon Ranch in Massachusetts with his wife and two magical bunnies who help him raise a herd of lifegiving milk cows. A childhood encounter with the evil lord Ganondorf brought about his love of music genres involving the words DOOM, DEATH and DESTRUCTION. Justin also enjoys watching films, playing Ludo and eating popsicles.
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