Description
Fascinating psychedelic noisy blues by Jesse Rakusin from Santa Cruz, USA. This is what you have been waiting for if you have been waiting for the sound of shit being beaten out of a drumkit. Also in the mix: delicate keyboard studies about freedom, warped guitar melodies, solar-powered chord slamming and fuzzed out blues solo-madness. Comparable to Blue Cheer. Includes the hit ‘Mac and Bloo’.
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“One last CD from the Lal Lal Lal batch, an act not from Finland but Santa Cruz, California, ladies and gentlemen, it’s Howlin’ Magic. I first heard Mr. Magic (it’s a one-man band) a year or two ago via a couple self-released CDRs. They had nice crude psychedelic magik-marker artwork and the sounds were definitely blown-out psyched-out fuzz-drool, but I just couldn’t get into the overall arc. There were riffs, and there was forward movement, but none of it seemed to interrelate to or interdepend on anything else. Seemed like another case of ‘rad sounds/no songs’. Siltblog took him down harshly, but I never wanted to write him off completely, and it is kinda nice to see this new disc with more of the handmade psychedelic artwork, promising song titles like “Thanaton III”, “The Oort Cloud”, “Lord Jagannath”, “Imagination is Power”, and further elucidating that last one, a truly excellent “revolution” manifesto on the inside. (It’s part of a longer post you can find on his blog.) I think I’m gonna keep the album for the artwork and the manifesto alone, but, although it is probably my fave of the (three?) Howlin’ Magic that I’ve heard, the awesome sounds are still adding up to less than the sum of their parts….”
– Larry Dolman / BLOGSTITUDE
