‘Too much Curtis… Too much Isaak,’ Howe Gelb wheezes on ‘Saturated Beyond’ against a stark stuttering electro backdrop. He sounds like he’s had too much of many other things too, as Viennese trio Radian duel with the Arizona songwriter and Giant Sand front man on this aural oddity.
It’s clear that they haven’t sat together in a room and jammed for a few evenings to come up with the nine tracks on this collaborative album, but frankly, it’s hard to really picturehow it came together, or where their collective heads were at. And that’s a good thing: this is an album that comes from nowhere in many ways, and as such is mysterious, enigmatic and alien.
The atmospheric ‘I’m Going In’ sounds like one side of the radio missives from someone on some risky and covert mission. Elsewhere, the burst of overloading lo-fi guitar in the middle of the six-minute ‘From Birth to Mortician’ is unexpected and takes the track in a Pavement-y direction, while the clattering avant-drone of ‘The Constant Pitch and Sway’ has heavy echoes of the Velvet Underground.
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The desert version of ‘Moon River’ that closes the album is unexpectedly touching, human. Way strange and way cool and well worth hearing.
Radian Online
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