Lightning Bolt - Hypermagic Mountain

by Jamie Rowland

published: 18 / 10 / 2005

Label: Load
Format: CD

Outstanding second album from psychedelic Rhode Island duo and drum and bass experimentalists, Lightning Bolt

Review

Providence, Rhode Island two-piece Lightning Bolt follow up their 2003 album ‘Wonderful Rainbow’ with new record ‘Hypermagic Mountain’. Now I should say that this is one of my favourite bands (one of my most prized possessions is a drum stick broken by Lightning Bolt at a Peel Session), so I was always expecting to give this album a good review, but even I was surprised by just how good it really is. This album is non-stop brilliance from start to finish, Brian Chippendale hitting his drums like they just called his mum something nasty and squawking into his adapted microphone (which he holds in his teeth, making the lyrics totally indecipherable) while Brian Gibson relentlessly pounds unnatural sounds from his bass. The music comes at you in waves and swarms around your head, a psychedelic whirlwind that sounds like hippies on the attack. It is, quite simply, a beautiful noise. There are too many excellent tracks to go through all of them, but opener ‘2 Morro Morro Land’, ‘Captain Caveman’ and ‘Birdy’ are all standouts. The opening moments of ‘Bizarro Zarro Land’ somehow remind me of the Beethoven re-workings found in the soundtrack to ‘A Clockwork Orange.' They then launch into a full-scale assault on your ears. ‘Magic Mountain’ is a big, 4 minute build up which really pays off in the last, aggro-filled 55 seconds. The only time this album ever lets up is in the second to last track, ‘Infinity Farm’; the band quietening down, taking it slow and catching their breath for just a couple of minutes, sounding slightly like early Animal Collective or the weirder parts of ‘The Spring Heel Penny Dreadful…’ by Of Arrowe Hill. But the absolute high point of this record (and we’re talking standing on a step-ladder at the top of the Empire State Building high, here) is ‘Dead Cowboy’, an 8 minute piece which I can comfortably say with complete honesty is by far the best recording I have heard this year. This track is amazingly good from start to finish. It never slips up. Chippendale and Gibson are clearly extremely talented musicians, in terms of both writing and playing, and ‘Hypermagic Moutntain’ is a fantastic record, an evolution in psychedelic music which needs to be heard to be believed. Well, actually, it just needs to be heard.

Track Listing:-

1 2 Morro Morro Land
2 Captain Caveman
3 Birdy
4 Riff Wraiths
5 Mega Ghost
6 Magic Mountain
7 Dead Cowboy
8 Bizarro Zarro Land
9 Mohawk Windmill
10 BizarroBike
11 Infinity Farm
12 No Rest For The Obsessed