Transmissionary Six - Transmissionary Six

  by John Clarkson

published: 13 / 2 / 2002

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Transmissionary Six are a new group from Seattle, which features the Walkabouts' Terri Moeller on drums, percussion and vocals, and former Willard Grant Conspiracy member and co-founder Paul Austin on guitars, piano and banjo. Initial reviews of the band's eponymous debut album, which was recorded over three nights in November, have largely drawn the duo comparisions with Mazzy Star, the Red House Painters and Tindersticks, but while the Transmissionary Six sound has a similar brooding, intense quality to all these acts, it is, however, also more cinematic and in part is reminiscent as well of a David Lynch film soundtrack.Austin's reflective,carefully constructed guitar lines have a similar eerie evocativeness to an Angelo Badalamenti composition, while Moeller, who leaves the singing in the Walkabouts to front woman Carla Torgerson, proves herself to be a vocalist of immense, previously unheralded talent with a set of spooky,ethereal vocals that bring back memories of 'Twin Peaks' and Julee Cruise. Austin has said that the lyrics on 'Paper Party Hat' were all taken from conversations overheard in a mental institution. Overall though the album's wording has been kept deliberately obscure and oblique, the listener being left to make up his or her own mind about what is being sung. A far away voice on 'Hollis and Applegate' soothingly chides the listener to "relax to sleep", but 'Mothball' finds Moeller enigmatically warning of an "accident". 'Marooned' meanwhile tells of "an air tight plan" that has been "busted" and gone "to Hell". The implication anyway is that beneath the beautiful surface veneers of this record the stuff of nightmares lie and that, again like with David Lynch in his films, things have gone violently askew and wrong. While 'Transmissionary Six' will be given a larger scale release on the Oregon label FILMguerrero in May, it is currently only available in a self-released edition of 1000 copies through selected web sites such as this one. Atmospheric, mysterious, and resultingly immensely rewarding, it is an early contender for the one of the albums of the year.

Track Listing:-

1 Short Wave Hello
2 Rodeo Satellite
3 Clay Man Down
4 Mothball
5 Marooned
6 Hollis and Applegate
7 My Paper Party Hat
8 Dog Eared
9 Submarine
10 Short Wave Goodbye

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