GAMELAN INTO THE MINK SUPERNATURAL

This is quite likely the loudest album in my collection this side of some of Merzbow's mid-'90s output, when the man seemed to want to push the harshness of digital sound to its maximum feasible limit. Perhaps unsurprisingly, The Psychic Paramount is highly based in noise-rock. Their sound is unpleasant and distorted, but that's of course the whole point. It's supposed to be an unrelenting wall of noise.

If you can get past the production, this is highly energetic and surprisingly catchy stuff. I'd even go so far as to say it's melodic. The band actually has pretty credible prog credentials; their lengthy instrumental compositions stretch out at length, with all the twists and turns you'd expect from the best prog rock, and they use unorthodox time signatures and bizarre composition techniques you'd expect from the genre. It's probably best described as a mixture of noise-rock, prog, psychedelic/space rock, and post-rock. I don't really know of many other acts that sound like them, though to be fair, I haven't explored the genre too much. It's probably worth also mentioning the works of spiritual predecessor Laddio Bolocko, which contained two of the same members but was prone to stretching out even more than the Psychic Paramount do and was rooted somewhat more in avant-garde jazz. If you like TPP, you'll probably like LB as well.

This band's other works aren't mastered quite as loudly as this one, and II is probably every bit as fun as this one, so it's probably a better starting place. I was introduced here, though, and I find there to be something special about it. I have to knock off a star for the production, though. I get what they were going for, but there's a point where even something that's supposed to be loud is still too loud. If the production were a shade less harsh, this would get an enthusiastic five stars.