Primordial Undermind - Beings of Game P-U
(Camera Obscura)
We've all had those long, lonely nights when you need a bit of music to drop you out of reality. That need may extend for a short period of time, or may need several repetitions to make sure the proper effect has been achieved. Primordial Undermind's latest CD, Beings of Game P-U, has earned a deserving location on the shelf alongside all of your other trip-out discs. Eric Arn (ex-Crystallized Movements) and Tom Carter (Charalambides) have constructed a solid hour of guitar fuzz, swirling violins and keyboards, and frantic drumming. Go ahead and plan on hitting repeat on this vocal-free trip.
A fifteen-minute long opening track typically means that good things are going to come your way. "Uva Urtana" starts small, with a series of slowly building, seriously discordant sounds. Much like what happens when you use a pair of binoculars to move from observing tiny details and then expand the image's field, over the course of the track's length the smaller, more disparate sounds slowly become part of a scattered yet strangely-coherent big picture.
"Glass/Spitt/Revelation" follows and immediately begins a more intense rock attack, almost bombastic in light of the previous track. It's hard to say whether the guitars or Jared Barron's drums are more responsible for the track's drive and focus—both definitely take their turn pushes themselves to the forefront of your hearing. From time to time the louder action subsides and Travis Weller's freak-out violin surfaces. Quite classy.
The first few moments of "Louse Dances for Laos" tricks the listener into thinking they've stumbled upon one of the South-East Asian Sun City Girls albums. Such spicy guitar work can stand alone for only so long. Drum and cymbal accents and a lovely low drone help fill out the rest of the picture. At a nice ten minutes, the track runs just the right length and flows nicely into the aptly titled "Mercury Shitstorm." Two minutes into the madness, some sort of out-of-this-world industrial sucking/grinding sound layers over some field recording insanity for a nice interlude from the more "structured" tracks.
Two strong and calm tracks, "Filament" and "Liquid Facets," remarkably conclude Beings of Game P-U. With all of the album's frantic and out-there energy burned off, the final third of the record is calm as well as calming. "Filament" comes out of the gates as the most traditionally arranged composition on the album. Well, traditional except for the fact that it is twelve minutes long. The first and earliest refrains sound like some sort of pop song that the Texas plains would write if given the chance. "Liquid Facets" follows in appropriate fashion, slowly and gracefully winding through interweaving twin guitar melodies. The track, and album, close and it's possible that you'll find yourself asleep. Maybe it's a good thing you forgot to hit repeat after all.
Beings of Game P-U is a complete varied and wide voyage at the hands of four musicians who simply want to play. Forget the trappings of long practices and rehearsals and anything else that wants to trap the music into a complete and predictable form. Primordial Undermind's series of spontaneous and artful sessions have created an album with those exact same qualities.
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