Great Electric,The - The Greater Electric (Sealed) (LP)

Limited coloured vinyl 12" LP. The Great Electric return with their second full-length album. Recorded in and around their native South London, this record sees the band building upon their love of sound collage, improvisation and cut-and-paste recording techniques. The record sees the band build upon the first album's motorik psychedelia, with the palette of influences on this record expanded to include early Simple Minds, ambient pioneer Hirosmi Yoshimura, and the avant-pop of Franco Battiato. 2020's enforced remote collaboration was no huge change in process for the band, as it's an approach they've always thrived upon since their inception. Large sections of the record were recorded individually before being passed between home studios, where individual parts were layered in before being passed on, Chinese Whispers-style. HARKONEN, the 25-minute album opener, was shaped from hours of extended improvisation, including long sections recorded live with Damo Suzuki of Can. As it evolves, the track veers between textured motorik rigidity, dreamy psychedelia, pulsating psych-rock, and bitcrushed noise to the extent the pressing plant asked if the mix was supposed to sound like that. Elsewhere the band showcase shorter, more immediate pop songs such as the triumphant optimism of VanDen Plas. The track builds continually, welding a celestial ensemble of Michael Rother-inspired guitar textures and layers of analogue synth melody. The Red Forest combines the textual interplay of vibraphone and piano with the rigid timekeeping of a drum machine, building to a Foxtrot-era Genesis crescendo drenched in layers of Fripp-ian fried cosmic fuzztone. Elsewhere, Jogging imagines the motorik sound presented in an alternative universe where vast stadium audiences clap along Radio Ga-Ga style, while Afterburner fizzes with layered, woozy Ry Cooder-meets-Eno intertwined guitar and synth melodies. With The Greater Electric, the band have combined an even wider palette of influences reaching far back into the historical c...