Sunwatchers and Eugene Chadbourne
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LA RECENSIONE

Mad Chad & Sunwatchers...

I know Mad well: gonzo journalist, rustic avant-gardist, inventor of strange musical machines, writer that no one will ever translate. The Sunwatchers, on the other hand, have never intrigued me, capish jazz stuff, apparently.

The album is a tribute to Minutemen, Doug Sahm, Henry Flynt: three characters, three intelligences, three ecosystems.

With the three becoming one by spelling out a word that doesn't come to me at the moment and probably never will.

Ah, I see I repeated the word "never" three times. Usually, that happens to me with "later"...

...

“Al contadino non far sapere quanto è buono il formaggio con le pere”. Well, the purpose of this album is exactly the opposite: let him know, let him know indeed.

Here a metallurgical groove and free noise sniff each other, rub together, get confused. To the point that in the end, you no longer know what is pear and what is cheese.

...

You know the Minutemen, right? Little tsunamis of clanking matter and shards of glass.

The Chadbourne treatment injects robust doses of capish things and caresses it all “with a spiked glove”. Is it possible that adding chaos to chaos is the most sensible thing to do? I'd say yes, also because, if I'm not mistaken, less times less makes more.

The avant-garde dresses up as a handmaid of rock’n’roll, a kind of maid who creates chaos to bring order. Yet everything flows. Everything runs as smooth as oil.

Perhaps compared to the original, the feeling of being shot in the face is lessened, but what about when the metallurgical river spreads into streams like Albert Ayler?

….

Then, while the last Minutemen sparks still hang in the electric air, here comes Chadbourne leaving his comic voice behind and hits us with a chilling recitative. It's “Chicano, soy chicano”, the poignant anthem of the desperados signed by Doug Sahm.

Yes, Doug Sahm. By paying homage to him, Sunwatchers and Mad Chad take off their fireproof suits and welding goggles and immerse themselves in a sound that ranges from tex mex, country, blues. A boiling cauldron, but ultimately quite classic. The sunny side of the rock soul, a good energy, a damn pleasure. Besides, Eddy Cilia informs us, Doug was someone so alive that he probably hasn't yet realized he's dead.

With Henry Flynt, prototype of the capish musician, suits and goggles are needed again. The only track dedicated to him, the longest on the album, starts as a transcendent blues but soon turns into a furious quarrel between Velvet and free jazz. Something very, very much like an apotheosis. So much so that it would take Dr. Adder, esteemed geologist of Debasio, to decipher this molten magma.

There you have it, Doug and Henry are nobodies, people who barely occupy a small column in the rock bibles. I myself know practically nothing about them. And so thank you, Professor Chadbourne, thank you indeed.

Trallallà