From Russia with fuzz comes an album whose theme is based around the international space race, a collection of songs that not only entertain but also tell a story of exploration, disaster and bravery.
The album is called "Oscillator" the band are Iordanis Chobanyan (guitar /effects/synths); Aleksandr Zadorojny (vocal/synths); Aleksandr Samarin - (bass/effects) and Dethcrusher (drums), otherwise known as Bongtower.
Let's get one thing out of the way first and that is that "Oscillator" is not a space rock album in the style of say Hawkwind or Oresund Space Collective, although their are plenty of whooshing effects and electronic burps and farts to be enjoyed along the way, "Oscillator" is instead a collection of crunchingly heavy psych tinted sludge tomes cleverly put together as a conceptual piece.
"Oscillator" boasts a catalogue of eleven tracks but of those eleven only six are actual full blown songs the rest are snippets of historical text narrated in serous tones by guest Viktor Grigoryan over a backdrop of suitably spacey music telling the story of two nations going head to head for dominance of the cosmos. Each of these little snippets sets the scene for the next song , for example "Phase 1" tells of the USSR's first manned flights and leads into the song "Voskhod-2". Musically Bongtower are a virtual sludge monster utilising massive sounding bass lines and pulverising percussion over which they layer a tsunami of synthesized effects, sampled soundbytes, huge bellowed vocals and waves of dark, dank guitar riffage. Each song from the, aforementioned, "Voskhod-2" through to "Salyut-7" has it's own brutal charm and each has its own little unique quirks and twists to keep it from just becoming just a another generic riff fest. The album finishes with a quite fitting cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" made even more memorable and almost equalling the original thanks to the outstanding voice of guest vocalist "Anna Peace".
Brutal, brainy and informative are not words you usually see put together in a music review but "Oscillator" is all those things and more, so if you want to rock out and be educated at the same time well then look no further.
Check it out ……
© 2020 Frazer Jones
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