MOON GOOSE – Murmurations (2024, LP/CD Fruits de Mer Records)
RELEASE INFO:
Label: Fruits de Mer Records
Format: LP, Album, Limited Edition, First Pressing Pink Vinyl, ( plus a set of 9 cards revealing a secret story), 300 copies
Format: CD, Album, Limited Edition, Digipack
Release Date: 27 Jan 2024
Our beloved Welsh gang from Hay-On-Wye, Moon Goose, are back with their 4th album entitled “Murmurations” (you can check my reviews on their previous 3 LPs, here: “La Nuit (2022, FdM Records)”, “The Wax Monster Lives Behind The First Row Of Trees (2020, FdM Records)”, and “Source Code (2019, FdM Records). Here’s a little info about “Murmurations” from their Bandcamp page:
“Murmurations describe a natural phenomenon in which a large group of starlings fly in unison using complex laws of movement depending on the relative birds around each individual. This behaviour can be observed on land in herds and under the sea in schools of fish. They are the natural answer of the collective facing a common danger. What seems to be engineered by the mind of one leader is actually generated by every individual’s awareness of the group, working together towards their collective fate. There must be a lesson there. Moon Geese (mean geese) murmurations are very rare because there aren’t any predators on the Moon except for a few quickly gone humans and a couple multilingual slow bots on wheels.
Murmurations is Moon Goose’s fourth LP, recorded and mixed at Twin Peaks Studio, Wales, by Adam Fuest (Mott the Hoople, Babyshambles, The Cure) and published by Fruits de Mer Records and Inflatable Tarmac Records.
The eight tracks featured in Murmurations were whispered by the Barn to the band on dark, icy nights, disturbing the quietness of the Welsh countryside with unrestricted turmoil.
Moon Goose put Space, Psych, Prog, and Motorik in a bag, shook it, poked it, and burned it, then spread the ashes from the top of the Welsh Mountains with the wind in their faces until their eyes were crying black tears”…
“Murmurations” consists of 8 tracks in total, equally divided into the both sides of the LP album, while 3 of them are surprisingly non-instrumental tracks! The opener “2023 AD” starts under a tick-tock clicking clock sound, sooner a dynamic full of energy beatable rhythm overfloods the place (and space) and while listening to the punky speak-like vocals, two words are stuck in my mind describing the best way what is going on inside this track, Cyber-Psych! Wow! As far as the musical “direction” of the song, I think that it dangerously flirts with the first album of The Psychedelic Stooges… Also, for some unexplained reason, “2023 AD” is ideal (in my mind) for the main theme on Trainspotting… (Wow, again!) “Last Flight Of The Moon Goose” starts and yes, The Stooges’ ghost has by now officially “occupied” this tremendous, mind-blowing, powerful, intergalactic instrumental… If, back in 1969, we used the cryogenic method for Iggy and his gang, THIS IS HOW exactly they would have sound in the year 2024! And, I cannot avoid telling you that in the back of my mind – as far as it concerns the bass – there’s an intense reference to Waymouth’s killer bass lines from the faraway 1977… Qu’est-ce que c’est? Fa-fa-fa-fa, fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa… This is such a great PSYCH track… “Cheese Lens” is torturously slow, mind-bending, hallucinated, lysergically trippy, and probably this is how Psychedelia would sound in the next century, when everything would be controlled by the machines, a lovely psych example of futuristic Cyber-delia! Side ‘A’ comes to end with the incredible “Rhesus David”, a fast up-tempo tune that acts as a Psych-Rockabilly song (or something like that), this is a rather dynamic instro, but only for the first couple of minutes. Because then, it totally transforms into a slow kind of funereal track drenched into melancholy and obscurity, and then after a more couple of minutes there’s another transformation… Robotic vocals under a futuristic PSYCH environment, a track that – at least into my mind – is ideal to be included in the soundtrack of one of my favorite ever animated films, 1980’s “Heavy Metal”! Side ‘B’ opens with “Cloud Of Eyeballs”, a cyber-a-delic Psych track with a rather punky attitude and a brutally addictive rhythm! “Compressed Hairstyles Of The New Settlers” is a faster tune, a much faster instrumental with a galloping psych driving rhythm, psychedelically flirting/blending with Space, Surf n’ Roll, and some Country Western music! An amalgam of futuristic PSYCH! “Geese In A Dinghy” is another fast n’ furious psych track, a mind-bending motoric beat/rhythm leads the track out of the rails, sooner to leave ground, reaching stratosphere, disappearing into the infinite SPACE! Space-Psych at its best! Eventually, the album comes to an end with “Shisha Shanti”, a much slower track, also the decibels are quite lower I must say, though the drumming is rather powerful in a magical trippy psychedelic way, well it feels like surfing in Space! Colorful numerous spacey n’ noisy sound effects are bubbling all over, making the final result a fucking brilliant PSYCH-SPACE Elegy! Superb! There’s No Escape! “Murmurations” it’s going to be one of the best albums of 2024! Destined to be a cult PSYCH album for the years to come… Grab it… TimeLord Michalis
Tracklist
A1 | 2023 AD | 4:15 | |
A2 | Last Flight Of The Moon Goose | 4:49 | |
A3 | Cheese Lens | 3:43 | |
A4 | Rhesus David | 8:50 | |
B1 | Cloud Of Eyeballs | 4:40 | |
B2 | Compressed Hairstyles Of The New Settlers | 4:34 | |
B3 | Geese In A Dinghy | 6:07 | |
B4 | Shisha Shanti | 6:06 |
Links:
Listen/Buy through MOON GOOSE Bandcamp
Check MOON GOOSE Facebook
Grab it via SHINY BEAST Mailorder