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SHIT AND SHINE Live At The aQuarius recOrds / WFMU Showcase – SXSW 2010 (Sleeping Giant Glossolalia)
Last year’s aQuarius / WFMU South By Southwest showcase was pretty tough to beat, if we do say so ourselves. An entire night of aQ faves, every single one kicking huge amounts of ass, and basically blowing us away over and over again. Just check out the lineup: Speedwolf, Iron Man, Moon Duo, Pierced Arrows, Dengue Fever, Epileptinomicon, Todd, True Widow, Sonny & The Sunsets, Headdress, Home Blitz, Drunkdriver, and Shit And Shine. We’d be hard pressed to pick a favorite set of the night, but lots of folks, ourselves included, might find ourselves leaning toward the rhythmic chaotic cacophony of Shit And Shine, a UK based multi-drummer drone-psych-noise unit who once called Texas home. And who, besides kicking up a glorious drum heavy racket, managed to keep the crowd riveted for their whole set, the members clad in strange costumes, a bunny suit, creepy plastic masks, furry animal heads, all while manning multiple drumkits and constantly switching instruments, and creating a glorious wall of pulsing, pounding, hypnotic sound. Luckily, the whole thing was captured on tape. And while maybe something is lost without the visuals, the music holds up surprisingly well on its own, the group’s single song set spread out over two sides, right out of the gate, the band lock into a rhythm and don’t let up.
The sound is blown out and in the red, helping make it sound exactly like being there (and like you forgot your earplugs), the legion of drummers, pounding out a rhythm in perfect unison, while the rest of the $+$ crew do their thing, their thing in this case being super distorted fuzzed out bass, processed alien vocals, blasts of screeching feedback, squalls of psychedelic white noise buzz, a sound that is basically krautrock writ NOISY and BLOWN OUT and HEAD CAVINGLY LOUD!
By the time the second half (side) rolls around, the buzz and pound are interrupted by thick shards of almost poppy melody, streaks of almost shogazey looped fragmented noise, until finally the jam switches gears, just a bit, and we get the $+$ version of ‘bringing it down’, a churning Circle like sludgekraut hypnorock groove that plays out until the record settles into a locked groove, which if you’re not paying attention, will have you listening to that single groove for EVER, before realizing something is up. And hell, we actually listened to it for 5 or 6 minutes, and probably would have let it keep on playing… (and the first side ends with a locked groove too, so be prepared to be mesmerized, endlessly there too!)…
Heavy and hypnotic, the perfect sonic souvenir if you were there, an even more perfect slab of crushing corrosive rhythmic noise rock weirdness if you weren’t.
Housed in a full color sleeve, an Austin backyard on one side, one of the $+$-ers on the other. Includes a Xeroxed insert, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
