Solar Anus - Skull Alcoholic- The Complete Solar Anus [Tumult - 2006]Skull Alcoholic brings together the complete discography of Japanese doom terrorists come psychedelic warrior’s Solar Anus. This is a wonderful produced and eye catching double disk set in a die cut out card sleeve and twisted and triped-out collage artwork with-in. It takes in all three of the bands albums from 1997 om to 2000’s Next world news, as well as an never before releashed track. Om starts off relatively standard Japanese doom, but with some nice odd touches like weird chanted voices, oriental instrumental to amibent drifts etc. Though there fairy standard doom concoction , the band do manage to stamp there personality on every song, making each a enjoyable ride that does not sound too close to other Japanese doom head’s like Boris . But as we move into 1999 Trance!! -Things start to get stranger, the odder parts are longer, the doom has become more twisted and tripped out. By the time we get to the material from their last album Next world news, they’ve dropped most of their doom edge and crack out of weird butterfly like of there doom cocoon to become a strange psychedelic come trance come prog band. That reels in oceans of bizzare and often jarring sound effects and weird percussive matter. Dips it’s toes in odd 80’s soundtrack elements, swoops down over odd tribal procession marches tinged with surreal edges. Throws it self into strange funky ,almost wrong disco discharges of throbbing rock, swims in eerier children’s music box ambience. Really there’s everything a fan of the musically twisted and odd could wish or want. And certainly if you enjoy doom and prog you’ll want into dive deep into this. Solar Anus really dissever to be mentioned in the same breath as other important and twisted Japanese artist. The only thing that lets the package down is your not sure where one album starts and finishers, it also would have be interesting to know what’s happened to the band now. But these are but miner quibbles when your faced with such odd and rocking and trance inducing material. To buy direct and hear samples go to here. Roger Batty
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