Agony Shorthand


Monday, December 06, 2004
SIGHTINGS : "ARRIVED IN GOLD" CD....



This SIGHTINGS trio is a real odd duck. I had them pegged last year for an over-the-top, free-form experimental version of BLACK FLAG or first-LP MEAT PUPPETS, and then they throw this thing out there and confound me all to heck. Since none of the 8 tracks had much to do with any of the others, let me tell you what you'll discover instead: wildly divergent soundscaping and tonebending, some formed (as opposed to formless) noise, a weird Eastern guitar pattern on "Sugar Sediment" that slithers and creeps real nicely, and a heavy-hitting trio of rock songs around tracks 5-6-7, one of which sounds like those super-clanging early 80s UK funk/noise bands like MAXIMUM JOY and PIGBAG. And not a Ginn riff in the bunch. I'm not going to tell you this will be in heavy rotation on the shower CD tunemaster the next few weeks, but SIGHTINGS are one of the more agile & deft purveyors of the dark, shape-shifting noise arts I've heard in a good long while, and for three CDs in a row they've made me sit up & take notation. I'll bet there's some real talented and well-versed musical poindexters peeking out behind the chaos, what do you think?