LAMINATED DENIM

The Australian psychedelic jam band whose mission, as they seem to have taken upon themselves, is to spread joy and cheer across the globe has graced us with five studio albums in 2022. Thank the Universe for King Giz! Long live the King!

1. "The Land Before Timeland" (15:00) a jam that sounds like Daevid Allen & Company playing over the CAN rhythm section contains a bit too simplified, drawn out themes and riffs for my enjoyment. In fact, I find the presence of the harmonica and high-pitched rhythm guitar chords actually annoy me. It's not until the final synth-drenched two minutes of READIOHEAD-like sound that I find myself interested and engaged. (25/30)

2. "Hypertension" (15:00) from the beginning this one is very different from the album's opener: with a very Afro-pop rhythmic base (deep bass, syncopated drumming, rhythm and lead guitars going idiosyncratically at the same time), in short, there's just a lot wider range of information coming into the listener throughout every bar of this song than the previous nearly-one-dimensional song. The lead guitar solo in the fourth minute threatens to drive the song into monotony but then he spreads his wings and the rest of the band is then able to return to their funkier explorations within the wide parameters allowed by the original groove. We return to the choral-vocal at the 5-minute mark while the band temporarily pulls back, leaving a more spacious soundscape over which the singers can have our fullest attention, but, by the end of the sixth minute, we're back to the multiple tracks of individuality noodling their way around in their happy-go-lucky way while creating a fairly perfect weave. In the eighth minute everybody finds themselves synching up in a fairly "stuck" pattern for a bit--which gives perspective to the individuals' relative freedom the rest of the song. Though the drums have become fairly metronomic by the end of the eighth minute, the basses continue to fly around their fretboards with relative ease and freedom, which is nice, while everybody else seems to have fun picking up any and every sound and instrument they whimsically desire to try. The eleventh minute feels similar to some recent MOTORPSYCHO guitar-centric jams while the joyfulness of the second half of the twelfth reminds me of something PARLIAMENT or CAMEO might have done and the thirteenth has some Edge-y U2-ishness, while the fourteenth seems to go the way of XTC and SEVEN IMPALE before coming back to the flute and choral vocals for the end. So much fun and exuberance! A early flawless epic jam. (29.5/30)

Total Time 30:00

A-/4.5 stars; two excellent prog jams that, together, don't quite account for a full album of music; thus, rated down for brevity.