Plastic Crimewave Sound
No Wonderland

THE REVIEW

This is how the lullabies for the puppies of the alien race that will wipe humanity off the face of the earth will sound. They will be sung by mothers with suction cups instead of fingertips, caressing the bumpy foreheads of children with amethyst eyes, nestled under anti-radiation blankets to protect them from gamma rays.

This is how the traffic jams on the slip road to Cassiopeia will sound: lineups of hundreds of Alpha South Centauris driven by midlife-crisis android employees, with battery acid-induced indigestion and silicone love handles.

This is how the assembly lines for the serial production of nightmare pills and the military parades of hacker armies will sound: legions of chubby individuals fueled by fried chicken wings and Dr. Pepper, with greasy hair and sweaty shirts.

This is how Steve Krakow sounds, the man with the mustache, a sort of Studio 54 outcast turned psychedelic noise-maker: comic book fanatic, record collector, designer, creator, author, and director (?!?) of the fanzine Galactic Zoo Dossier. And, above all, the owner of the acclaimed Plastic Crimewave brand: more or less a commune of rough types based in Chicago, apostles of a annoying and low-fi psychedelia, full of hyperfuzz and aerospace guitar effects.

This is how "No Wonderland" ('06) sounds, which is, until now, the most beautiful record of the Plastic Crimewave Sound: eighteen snapshots from a hallucinated and noisy future, like a The Heads vinyl run over by a steamroller, repaired with packing tape, and put to spin in a microwave.
Like a collage, a mosaic made with the pieces of a hundred different puzzles: radioactive garage-punk chained to the seat of a spaceship and kicked into whirling through the galaxies ("Far In/Out"). Long processions of loops for guitar, bass, and drums saturated with a burdensome and corrosive fuzz, providing the background to Gregorian chants regurgitated from some medieval future ("Rolling Seas"). Military marches derailing submerged by a whirlwind of bruxism-afflicted humbucker ("Corrosive"). Unexpected acoustic ballads ("Moving Just Fine"), and scraps of intergalactic chronicles and prophecies.

It sounds like Simon Price and Wayne Coyne got their hands on Robert Calvert's stamp collection.

It might not be Wonderland.
But it's pretty close.