SBR 026
songs-...And The Tracks Lead That Way, El Corazon, Downtown, Carve The Roast, Zolla, Sangre De La Luna, Soul Patch, King of the Hip Hop Swing, Hey Steve, Can You Run Fast?, Valley of the Shadow, Wish, Blues For The Shifting Sands, Over The Mountain, Rock You, Just Like The Sunset, The Desert Lies Waiting...
An interesting departure from psych-rock of other SZS releases, Transmissions from Satellites Volume I is an instrumental exploration of sound. Eric Johnson (drums) and Steve Goetz (bass) recorded hours of drum and bass rhythm tracks for this project. Each person was given a copy of those 2 track master tapes and the musicians individually edited the tracks and added overdubs. In effect, Johnson and Goetz created two completely different interpretations of the same rhythm tracks. Volume I is Johnson’s interpretation; Volume II is Goetz’s version. Volume I is soaked in ambient e-bowed guitar and Moog synthesizer creating an atmospheric experience that is both fresh and fascinating.
slowburnrecords@aol.com
Volume One
Transmissions From Satellites Volume One
at Perkele.com
Sorry about this very rough translation from Italian to English. To read the original review in Italian please click here
And? indeed it originates them l?idea that has had Steve Goetz and Eric Johnson, alias Sun Zoom Spark: to record hours and hours of jam only improvised with bottom and battery and then to let out two discs with the same ritmiche but cures to you in various ways from everyone of the two. This small saga has had therefore beginning with the first volume, cured from Johnson, which beyond that on drums preferred with guitar, flauto, moog and percussions. That that comes some outside is a sound magmatico and separated, pure rock psichedelico that remembers it makes more stralunate than Outskirts Of Infinity and Bevis Frond (to case the same Nick Saloman has not compared the groove given off from band to the experiences the passages of old glories psych like The Yellow Pages and The Hook). But the Sun Zoom Spark is not sure first arrives to you, is by now in turn from a ten of years and the accumulated experiences (as an example the collaboration with the Black Sun Ensemble di Jesus Acedo) is made to feel. Astral Rock and jam in full freedom sonorous d?espressione, progressive constructions and parenthesis ambient, the escapes are ollowed l?una behind l?altra El corazon, Hey Steve, can you run fast?, with guitars that pass from the garage Downtown to the hendrixiano style Valley of the Shadow until to being sharp and cutting Over the Mountain. The oniriche atmospheres of Blues for the Shifting Sands they indeed make to fly, as well as how much the Latin sapori of Soul Patch, while the delicate ones inserti of flauto in Zolla and Rock You they confer an light touch to all. Little the sung parts (ironiche those present ones in King of the Hip Hop Swing, allucinate those of Just Like the Sunset, that that predominates is it wants to improvise and to get lost in smoky jam where l?unico canovaccio to follow it is that one written in the own mind. Beautiful trip this first part of the new targato experiment Sun Zoom Spark. It does not remain to us that to wait for in trepida waited for the second understood signed it Steve Goetz in order to see end where arrives the verve libertaria that spirit these getlteman musicians?
SUN ZOOM SPARK
Transmissions From Satellites Volume One (Slow Burn)
Once upon a time there was a skronky Tucson, Ariz.,power trio called Sun Zoom Spark. Christened in a fit of Beefheart-induced psychosis and specializing in full-bore guitaradelica that’d singe the nose hairs of
a Hawkwind acolyte at 100 paces, SZS gradually
assimilated its position on the somewhat timid late
‘90s Old Pueblo music scene, even going so far as to pull double-duty as ¾ of the revived Black Sun
Ensemble. With personnel shifts ultimately taking their toll, guitarist Eric Johnson finally put the beast to rest in 2001, but later, when a local rock opera production required a band to provide live accompaniment, he reformed the group, and SZS remains extant to this day. Key recordings fully representative of the group’s prowess include 1999’s Electricity and 2002’s In Stereo, although this new one, while wildly experimental, will disappoint neither longtime SZS supporters nor trad psych fans. In a nutshell, Johnson and bassist Steve Goetz went into the studio and laid down several hours’ worth of jam sessions, then each
man took home a copy of the recorded results in order to individually create two different works of art from the same raw materials. Volume 1, then, is a mostly instrumental set assembled by Johnson by editing down hours of bass and percussion tracks then overdubbing his guitar (much of it employing E-bow), flute and Moog synth parts. (Goetz’s Volume 2 is due soon). Each of the 16 cuts has its own discrete character –
“Downtown,” for example, has a bluesy, Hendrixian
vibe, while the more wobbly, woozy “Soul Patch” seems to bubble up from a pit of primordial gunk, and the Zappaesque “Hey Steve, Can You Run Fast?” features one of the album’s very few vocal passages, a kind of streetwise hipster rap atop lumbering bass and shards of guitar fractals – but the album works best as a kind of psychedelic suite, an extemporaneous blowout well suited to preliminary – and concurrent – chemical
stimulation. To paraphrase Pink Floyd from 1972,
wot’s, uh, the deal, gents?