There are times I dream about a city like New Orleans and think how much cheaper it must be exist as a band - the rehearsal space, living expenses ... all of this should lead to crazier experimentation. If you don't have to spend endless hours just to barely support yourself you have a lot more time to devote to music. I'd like to think New Orleans Mystic Insane evolved out of that very petri dish, isolated in their own pocket of mutation, festering in their place that isn't hardcore or post punk.
A-Side's "Deep Creep" drops into the middle of a muted tone hum, an almost low end keyboard droning into a stumbly guitar bass drum trio lazily crawling its way up the crooked stair case slowly scraping at messy vocals. It's a weird amazing sludge barely able to roll out of bed in the morning and when it turns to this chorus it picks up a subtle snarl with the thick distortions of Bleach. The same dreary aggression of off kilter minor chords barely holding on to it's weak structure that just appeared one day. Embracing that ugly side of these notes of the jangle that happened to work without the tuner, one of those surprises with the tape running at the wrong speed. Walking through that swamp mud and everything's sticky with pieces of moss or trees with green spider web crap all over them reaching out and grabbing the drummers sticks and speaker cabinets. Exactly titled perfectly this drones out with the same kind of struggling exhaustion, swallowed by that jagged quicksand.
B-Side "Blue Manhattan" rises up in post punk choppy bursts, the same chunky spastic hops as The Sediment Club or Cabaret Voltaire (another petri dish?). Snotty vocals maybe keep this in some kind of punk camp and this chorus that flails around like those moments right before death. Screechy guitar in single notes or strumming around in the big stuff makes no difference held in this giant mitts for hands. "I believe in UFO's" is another single note rhythm and stomping beat and the bass gives this have a direction to run in. I like this kind of hint at supernatural stuff, like the ghost punk of These Are Powers but southern tinged. The spirit of the Dead Kennedys here in funny rhythms but they're really going right for the post punk ideas and minimalism with real messy vocals high up there and damaging, but with a lot of art at the heart of this. Tricky changes and vocal warbling that nods towards the East Bay but really nothing to pin them to.
On black vinyl with cryptic visions scratched in the gutter about Wynton Marsalis. Get this from Negative Jazz Records.
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