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Rating: There are two ways to make a live album: you can choose a handful of the band's hits, smooth out any excessive roughness, and add a good dose of in vitro screams, or you can capture on disk what the band is actually doing live, creating an ambitious but sincere product.
And that's what Motorpsycho decided to do with the project "Roadwork", whose first outcome, with an ironic and unlikely title, comes from the "Trust Us" tour, anno Domini 1998, after 27 concerts and about 40 hours of recordings, and finally marks the return of the trio formation (Bent, Snah, and Geb), in the hardest rock phase of their career before the pop-psychedelic turn of "Let them eat cake." The band itself selects the material deemed worthy of being recorded, excluding any marketing logic, and it shows: sometimes the sound is not the best—the level of dB at which the songs were recorded and the words "high fidelity" are not compatible—sometimes Bent's voice wavers, and the versions of the 6 tracks proposed here, stretched out and marked by improvisation, are certainly not the best means to reach MTV's chart position no. 1.
The opening is entrusted to the rock of "The other other fool", a track never recorded in the studio, originally conceived as an integral part of "The other fool", from which it was separated due to the excessive diversity of the two pieces: an irresistible wah-wah bass groove introduces us to a long pseudo-stoner delusion of rare power, supported by a pounding drum and a paranoid chorus that you'll find yourself humming in the shower, taking us back to the '70s. Impossible not to shake your hips! The baton is then passed to the monumental "A K9 suite", legitimate offspring of "Un Chien D'espace", which takes just the initial and final part; the rest is another song. A half hour of vortices and dissonances, a very long central part where the three experiment with other instruments (Bent rages on a 12-string guitar while Snah materializes his nightmares on a Rhodes piano and a Moog Taurus), starting almost from silence, playing only one note for three minutes, then accelerating more and more until the song implodes and collapses on itself, leaving the audience stunned and dazed in its convulsions. It's almost like witnessing an initiation rite, where the three priests offer incomprehensible tributes in the light of a blood-red moon. It's as if Pink Floyd met Sonic Youth and they all did acid together. To let us catch our breath and digest this absurd journey, without hesitation the 70s bass riff of "Superstooge" begins, offered here as a medley with "The Wheel", the drone colossus from "Timothy's Monster". Forget about vibraphone, mellotron, and piano: on stage, there are only three of them, and they each have two hands. But stripped of its more psychedelic components, the six hands in question give life to a truly engaging sonic assault, even if it doesn't reach the austerity and hypnotism of the album version, which remains unbeaten (and unbeatable). The anthem "Walking On The Water/You Lied", sung out loud by the whole audience, opens the more rock part of the album, in which the power trio unleashes all of its overwhelming energy, and one almost feels like jumping and smashing some windows with one's head. Followed by a cover, "Black To Comm" by MC5, fierce and violent, also featuring a part of "Back To Source", suitably modified to best fit the absolutely rock 'n' roll rhythm of the cover. A brief pause and the notes of a glockenspiel make us understand we've reached the end of this whirlwind journey: it's the magnificent and touching "Vortex Surfer", one of the most beloved tracks by the large and loyal group of fans, poignant and emotional starting from Bent's expressive voice.
Thus, the album concludes, confirming once and for all the authority and validity of the chameleon Motorpsycho, undoubtedly one of the best and most original underground European groups of the past twenty years, which has made word of mouth and the sincerity of its musical proposals its best weapons.
Space is the Place.
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