Taos Humm - Flute of the Noodle Bender

  by Kimberly Bright

published: 27 / 5 / 2017

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Review

Fifty years after the first Summer of Love it’s reassuring that there are still experimental, psychedelic, art rock garage bands like Bristol’s Taos Humm. But the trio’s (Sunny-Joe Paradisos, Matt Robbims, and Edward Penfold) debut album 'Flute of the Noodle Bender' is no summery, harmonious psychedelic experience. It’s noisy, avant-garde, and meandering, veering into different styles but not committing fully to any. The band’s name is taken from the unexplained phenomenon of a low-frequency hum or rumbling supposedly emanating from the beautiful bohemian New Mexico art colony town of Taos, once the home of artists such as painter Georgia O’Keeffe and her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz. The pervasive hum isn’t audible to all people. A bit more mysterious buzzy hum on these completely unstructured songs would, however, be incredibly welcome. Much effort seems to have gone into simply being incredibly weird. The off-kilter vocals are among the weirdest elements, sometimes very much in the background, chanting or whispering, or distorted and angular, at atonal odds with the rest of the music (opening track 'RC'). The sparse, unhurried 'Bluhr' could easily have been produced by Steve Albini a quarter century ago. The dream-like muttering on 'Meek', similar to the spoken lines from 'King Lear' over the radio at the end of 'I am the Walrus', constitute a bizarre but lovely moment. 'BB' sounds like authentic reverb-heavy 60#s psych but is quickly spoiled by what is surely an apocalypse taking place in a metal shop, complete with unpleasant squeaking, trebly effects. Their adventurousness is best spent on the droney, mellow, hypnotic songs like 'Son Song' that sound like an entranced Spacemen 3, 'Hi Hats Are For Post Punk Heroes', and the genre-blurring instrumental jam 'Velociraptortoise'. 'Scarlet You’re Handsome' has interesting abrupt changes of mood after an onslaught of endless opening guitar feedback. The album’s full-out fuzzy garage guitar freak out is reserved for 'OOO OOO OOO'. With so much shape-shifting taking place in the course of ten songs, it’s difficult to pinpoint an overall feeling or style helping the album to cohere. There is a lot to enjoy, randomly interspersed with too much harshness to allow the listener to happily zone out. Like a first date with an art school grad student that’s gone on a bit too long, it’s engaging and attention-seeking at times and too repetitious and unyielding at others.

Track Listing:-

1 RC
2 Hi Hats Are For Post Punk Heroes
3 Bluh
4 Meek
5 Velociraptortoise
6 Scarlett You`re Handsome
7 000 000 000
8 𐐒B
9 Tape Star
10 Son Song

Band Links:-

https://en-gb.facebook.com/taoshummban
https://twitter.com/taos_humm

Label Links:-

https://www.facebook.com/stolenbodyrec
https://twitter.com/Stolenbodyrecs
https://www.youtube.com/user/thebadjok
https://stolenbodyrecords.co.uk/
https://www.instagram.com/stolenbodyre