We can’t travel far in Dunedin right now, but we can explore outer space with Space Bats, Attack! thanks to a brand new release of timeless 5 year old recordings called “Oort”. Here’s “Suns”:
“Suns” is a relentlessly heavy psychedelic monster of a track, melting together hot sparking guitars with an old analogue mono synth to stretch the fabric of space and time. It’s in the same kind of league as those fabulously heavy psych jams created by the combination of Kandodo McBain.
The whole album – recorded 2016 but unreleased for 5 years – is a deep well of psychedelic space-rock, futuristic astral surf rock, and, well, just joyfully inventive noise. There’s so much to explore here, and so much exploratory wigged out energy, insane riffing, and pulverising bass and drums, it will give your stereo (or heaphones) a good workout.
To recap briefly – Space Bats, Attack! are also a discovery point for a swathe of other noisy Dunedin guitar bands. As well as guitarist Lee Nicholson (Thundercub, and Lightning Wave effect pedal guru) you have guitarist Richard Ley-Hamilton (formerly of Males, now Asta Rangu), and the Nicholls brothers – Josh (drums) and Zac (bass). Zac is also a brilliant guitarist and along with Josh is in Koizilla. Various members are also present in current noisy Dunedin bands Bathysphere and Dale Kerrigan.
PopLib is an ecclectic music blog if nothing else. So we go from The Clientele’s autumnal English art-project music in the previous post to the heavy psych-rock of Wellington’s Transistor. Here’s “The Sun” – the opening track of a riff-laden EP released last year.
Pop Lib 