Hop aboard the Great Space Coaster, y’all! Yeah, you’re about to go on a journey through the cosmos of inner and outer space. The conductors of this train? Farflung. Part human, part alien, and all right!
This one took me by surprise because it started off as what sounded as your average punk thing, but then something magical happened. These punkers decided to take their music to another dimension (enter bitchin’ Rod Serling voice) and weave an intricate pattern of sight and sound that tickles the back of the eye. On A Wound in Eternity two genres that were never intended to mix, punk rock and prog-rock, collide with enough force to shift the space / time continuum. Progressive punk rock? Work with me on this, people . . . musicians who work more than three chords into a song and then blast you with wave after wave of delay drenched feedback. Spacey and droney, and all kinds of good fun!
Opening track “Unborn Plant” and it’s follow up, “Endless Drift Wreck,” lead off the disc with all of the urgency of classic alt-punk, but interestingly enough, they didn’t follow the path of lemmings and looked within to create a more spaced out sound. Layers of guitar textures build the sonic landscape, enriching the classic punk sounds with a fresh perspective. The vocals drone in the background and then leap to the front of the mix, spitting a verbal assault on par with your Johnny Rotten’s or Iggy Pop’s. And then, something truly remarkable happens . . . the guitar synths take off and create a wave all warm and aglow around us happy listeners. It’s as if they hollered at us to the point of tears, and then wrapped their big ole meaty arms around us to comfort us past the pain. Pure brilliance!
By the third track, A Wound in Eternity, in a trippy Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey kind of way, cuts the umbilical hose as we’re taking a space walk. Drifting helplessly through the tail of a passing comet, or staring head long into a swirling multicolored starry orgasm of a nebula, we become entranced and, thusly, lost within our thoughts. “Like it Never Has Been,” “IX,” “Silver Shrooms,” and “Precognition” best capture this space walk to infinity (and beyond!) at it’s psychedelic best.
After spinning the disc for more than a week straight, I think I’ve begun to truly understand the brilliance of this work. I’ve found myself rocking in time with the agro-distorted groove of the punk offerings, then suddenly find myself floating through the ether as the band shifts to a more ambient swell. It’s easy to get lost in a semi-meditative state as the tunes coarse through us. A bit droning at times, but never being deterrent. Not virtuosic enough to be truly categorized as prog, but spacey enough, and so far left from center, to ever be considered straight up punk. Farflung and A Wound in Eternity, thankfully, defy categorization to the point that they’ll probably unwittingly create their own sub-genre. The album is cosmic spacecraft that will take you to heights unimagined and if you’re not careful, could leave you floating there all alone. I’ve got my ticket . . . how about you? - Pope JTE
Buy here: A Wound in Eternity
Buy here: A Wound in Eternity
Comments
I have a ton of Farflung CD's...get in touch if you need copies of any of 'em.
rocknrollsteve at gmail dot com
later,
RnRS