乐队列表 Space Rock Moon Duo Love on the Sea

Eric “Ripley” Johnson already seemed to have made his point with “Wooden Shjips”, but that wasn’t quite enough for him. So, just shortly after launching this utterly freaked out psychedelic space vehicle, he teamed up with Sanae Yanada, a lady, who apart from being able to hit a few keys on a board, knows how to get a devastating rocket booster drone out of a drum machine. This was the birth of Moon Duo, and soon even the bones of Yuri Gagarin could be heard rattling along the melody from his grave.
Forgive me that in this review I will have to pass on my, normally analytic, style of writing, because what Johnson and Yanada produce just cannot be understood with a sane mind.

But well, ok, before I hit the LSD stash myself and wash that down with a couple of bottles of wodka, let me at least try to make a few things clear to those who think life makes more sense if lived with a sober and square mind.
Eric Johnsons credentials are somewhat unsure: Some consider him a messenger from outer space, the Christian right believe he is a special envoy of the devil sent to corrupt mankind beyond their already deplorable level. The White House and the Pentagon however are convinced that he is the combined reincarnation of Lenin and Bin Laden, but as he seems to be moving somewhere in between the fifth and sixth dimension, hitting him with airstrikes and drones has proved so far to be even more difficult than blowing Bashar al Assad‘s ass off.

Whether the story started in hell, some far of hostile planet or any other evil shithole, I will leave in the middle here for the sake of “serious” musical journalism. What however we do know is that Eric hails from San Franscisco, California and that he waited until quite a mature age (Just as several others that involve themselves with the black art of the psychedelic), before hitting the stages. His first try at eternal infamy was Wooden Shjips, kind of a remake of the good old Soyuz rocket but entirely made of what you could find in any thrash bin and glued together with ultrapure THC.

According to Ripley, Wooden Shjips was meant to be “a band made up of non-musicians as the lack of any experience would make them less prone to any biases” In an initial meeting the band members were assigned instruments they had never seen before. Creating a universe is difficult business, especially if it is attempted by muddled minds and thus usually it takes many tries before any result shows. But probability holds its own surprises and in this case it proved to be a giant piece of dinosaur crap immediately hitting the cosmic fan.

What happened now is history and known to everybody: San Francisco was once more the centre of the psychedelic, the evil status of music was assured for our lifetime and much, much more (read the next episode!) The president got all his security advisers together over the question if not now all troops from Afghanistan and Iraq had to be withdrawn and sent to Frisco immediately (However nothing resulted from that meeting as they had to call it quitters halfway due to Hillary having a bout of bad farths, besides that, China refused the four trillion loan necessary to do the job). As usual the British parliament showed more vigor and adopted laws nobelizing Hawkwind’s Dave Brock to “Lord Master of the Universe” and declaring space rock “An un-alienable part of British heritage”

If you think that after this the people of earth could once more go to sleep assured that everything was OK again, you make a terrible mistake. Because in the meanwhile, Eric Johnson, featuring the good looks of Charles Manson in his prime and dissatisfied with the effects so far had sat down with an equally muddled genius, called Sanae Yanada, in order to create a quake that would make the Richter scale a complete joke and would be sure to rip the planet apart. Thus “Moon Duo” saw the light. Just as our good Lord who is in heavens and as stoned as us had famously predicted: “This is ….eh…..weeelll, you know…..pretty…eh…..far out!”


EHHH……WHAT IS THIS????

Very soon Moon Duo launched a satellite that was as much meant to hit the inner space as the outer space: It pretty much did. And, as you can’t trust any of your fellow men, a couple of traitors to mankind, calling themselves “music reviewers” had the foul guts to acclaim this offense, called “Love on the Sea”, well. It must be something that the LSD I took today was bad in some way, but I have to admit that I am irresistably drawn to join the frame.

Two songs only, but any more would be lethal to most and I warn all you kids: “DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME!!!!!” because if you do you will get sucked in without any hope of redemption. You know, it is kind of like heroin, only stronger, once you taste it, your will is destroyed and the only thing you want is more. The good news however: This new drug has a very high positive tolerance, so, if you build up your use of it with care, (I advise that in the beginning you don’t use it more than say 50 times a day), the risk of overdosing is very minimal

OK, I’ve thrown a bucket of water over my head, so that I can add a few serious notes here. The music of Moon Duo is very experimental, reminds a lot of the Velvet Underground, but is much heavier than it and sounds more energetic. Most experts would probably call it drone and there is very much to say for that. On the other hand however, drone is a subdivision of Doom Metal and as such Moon Duo does not fit in this very well as their attitude is generally positive (“Dance California, dance”). A few wise-noses will probably point out that everywhere in their sound there is some scary undertone, suggesting violence more than peace, but, hey, forty something wars later the hippies also aren’t as nice anymore as they once were, question of expediency you know………

Oh, yes, sure, in my reviews there is always something about artwork, production and release, so here you are:

Artwork: Now, don’t become insulting, capice? This is state of the art! Besides that at that moment toilet paper prices had soared so high that is was out of the question to use it for the package. What you want to see in it is entirely your problem. Yes, could be the image of a dried out human brain (Yummie if you eat it with cheap mayonnaise), Or maybe it is half the earth wasting away in space after the quake of the next Moon Duo CD (You better hope you end up on the good half of the planet in such case).

Production: Hahahahaha………, what the hell does “Prosuction” mean?

Release: Even if you have the entire US army and CiA waterboarding me, I wouldn’t be able to give you a clue who “Sick Thirst Records” are. Probably just another sick joke of Eric. But somehow, in a rare moment of sobriety they managed to get a couple of CD’s pressed. For reasons unknown, some of them reached the public. (The FBI is still looking for the perpetrators)


CONCLUSIONS

Moon Duo, that is mainly Ripley Johnson, just can’t fail! Take for instance me, an old, fat, beersoaked and frustrated spacehead, marooned by nightmares of thousands of Justin Biebers and Britney Spearses, which made me seriously contemplate suicide: Prozac didn’t work, valium ten had become like candy and my acid dealer refused to give me any more credit. Guess what? I put this record on and 20 minutes later I was cured!

Cutting the jokes for a moment: Ripley Johnson is one of the best things to have appeared in music during the last 10 years. Wooden Ships was already great, with Moon Duo he gave a heavier, dronier turn to his efforts. Nothing worth listening to for squares, feeble minded or fundamentalist metalheads, but absolutely great for those loving the experiment and those who are into drone a lot. One of the only eight albums in my 7500+ collection to score above 95 out of 100 , so the full 20 points here!