Izititiz
Lucky Bird
(Soundatone 65)
Arenius I / Arenius II / Arenius III / Arenius IV (the whale) / Blues / Man / Lucky Bird (70:10)
Ras Moshe, as, ts, flt, b cl; James Duncan: tpt; Carter Thornton, g; Matt Heyner, b; Jesse Wallace, d; uncredited synth on 7. No place of recording or date listed.
Over an hour of lo-fi garage-improv – the tape hiss is stylishly prominent in the mix. Things start off in a slow-moving haze, then build to a conventional freakout which gets you past the album’s halfway point. Next comes ten minutes of collective percussion-banging, Art Ensemble-style. Last is “Lucky Bird,” fifteen minutes which add ugly synthesizer to the palette. These guys are pushing their luck by putting an image of Animal from The Muppet Show on the cover: the Electric Mayhem was way better than this dreck.
Nate Dorward
Cadence, February 2004
