Trumans Water
Spasm Smash XXXOXOX OX And Ass

"Today, in the semantic place of the term noise, a wide variety of musical experiences are crowded (...) the term, in short, is not capable of identifying a homogeneous research area that can provide clear and univocal results". Andrea Prevignano will forgive me for borrowing part of the preface to his book Noise (Castelvecchi, 1998) to introduce the American band Trumans Water, who clearly fall within the genre but have peculiarities that force a rethinking of the reference coordinates. It's not so much a matter of mere volume—which, as it happens, is outrageously high—but an unregulated attitude that by ear memory had never been heard before: Trumans Water's guitar ravings have no equals in the history of the instrument. This approach, made up of ultra-low fidelity recordings, demented guitar assaults, tons of mishaps, pseudo improvisations, distinguishes them from omnivores like the early Boredoms and intellectuals like Sonic Youth.

This second album of theirs—following the self-produced debut Of Thick Tum, also distributed thanks to the endorsement of the late John Peel—stands out mainly for the technique displayed by Trumans Water: either they can't play, or they are brilliant at making you believe they can't. The opener Aroma of Gina Arnold makes things clear right away: eight minutes of off-key choruses, slips, hard guitar thrashing, purposely set to drive away the casual listener. And we're just getting started: next up are caveman hard-rock (Limbs), hysterical screams over equally hallucinated guitars (Rations), rattling accelerations (the excellent Sun Go Out, Soar, Speeds Exceeding), even passages that could be called "psychedelic" if it weren't for the fact that the framework is among the most absurd ever heard (Dead to Dead Things, Finger). The instrumental Bludgeon Elites & Stagger sums up all these elements: guitar accelerations and dissonances, lysergic riffs, accompanied by the hysterical screams of the group. Another "peak" of the album is Athelete Who Is Suck, which begins with a bouncy rhythm imposed by the drums, before accelerating into a passage as whirlwind-like as it is delirious: a hard-psychedelic parody as grotesque as it is perfectly successful.

The layout that will drive you crazy in trying to decipher the lyrics or titles (completely demented and misleading, it almost goes without saying) is a (un)worthy corollary to the madness that resides in the minds of Trumans Water, which in this album has found free rein. What else to add: this album will give you otitis and maybe you have to be a bit off-kilter to appreciate this stuff...