Blissed Out Fatalists
Blissed Out Fatalists

But look, like many works of the "California trance" from the late '80s, what happens here is that this LP is also unique in every way: from the idea, the approach, the music made of harmony and noise, the graphics, that disappearing act right after appearing, that disturbing Christmas tree on the back cover...

This is one of the few records I've been regularly listening to for over thirty years, at least a couple of times a month. And every time it pumps me up, charges me, it caters to both the low and high parts, it's immediate, it's bold, it makes me feel young...

In the end, it catches you off guard with that industrial-noise-mad caper that's "Right Now, Right Out," and the disintegration is served: crystal clear, austere, and joyful, they hit with a hammer of flesh after brilliantly preparing themselves with the other tracks to illustrate a path made of distortions, explosions, disruptions, accelerations that explain a first side creating a splendid underground sound, opening up to the world with strips of light that reflect the basement and debunk the idea that some kind of niche music must necessarily be anguished. Not here, here we find an impersonal ferocity that doesn't create dualism, the sound clash is fraternally liberated from competition: we all crash together to add a primordial noise to the performance. The unpunished cheekiness of the ensemble pushes for participation.

The guys are in shape, from the warm-up with the Blue Daisies of "Wilth" Jeffrey Poe & Nicolas Greene export the immediacy, the unstoppable percussion of Biff Sanders (real drums), why even say it, blend the wrongdoing, Jon Lyon's stadium-guitar gets the whole show off the ground. The released euphoria is irresistible, unapologetic eclectic artist-asteroids who, instead of having a depression crisis of not being "understood," dump a bucket of water on you.

Printed by Motiv Communications (Fourwaycross, Steaming Coils, Ethyl Meatplow) in Los Angeles in 1987 in the usual "few" copies, the very modern cover confirms the attributes of the group, which resolves, with the immediacy of a never-cliché sound, cogitations for their own sake with a disdainful sneer surfing a profane wave on a board of brazenness.

They present themselves cerebrally compact but with an absurd speed that disintegrates thoughts and inaugurates a new type of sound party where even the brain needs muscles to support the arrival of a frantic Nirvana. The Leap is without a net, and the fall tears away the wax that insulated us in wool.

The insolent trance-noise alarm is fierce, and the musical adrenaline acts as an amulet not to fall into the damnation of the ultimate drug: away with you, Adenochrome! We just need the reinterpretation of the Leather Nun's piece "Can you feel It," the first of the second side, for a total and clean exaltation: turn up the volume, turn it up, turn it up.

And in the 2012 CD reissue, a tear makes an appearance when Nick and Jeffrey, in the booklet, recount the birth of the project, the realization, the positive feedback from the indie scene, the oblivion of 25 years, the resurrection, and the serene and melancholic memories of friends: I do this now, he does that, the other does the other thing, about Jon (the one with the stadium-guitar), no news: "No one knows what happened to Jon..."

And the "Last song" of the record materializes a minimalism of a powerful sound when the needle of the turntable, getting stuck, bounces continuously on the last groove creating a mechanical effect of "eternal no return" of the arm, triggering an irreverent reverb.
Forever Blissed, Escapism Is Now is etched on the vinyl...

Years pass "kids," they pass, but I know that, thanks to the Blissed too, we'll be twenty forever...