ALBUM REVIEW: Wild Rocket - "Dissociation Mechanics"

By: Ernesto Aguilar

Album Type: EP

Date Released: 07/07/2017

Label: Art for Blind

Their debut "Geomagnetic Hallucinations," earned a reputation for its immersive music and brainy, intriguing lyrical themes. With their follow up they give you that again, and more. Make no mistake this group is a high-quality original that stands on its own. The stupendous "Into The Black Hole" is a true testament to that.

“Dissociation Mechanics” CD//DD//LP track listing

1. Caught In Triangle Again

2. Infinite Reconnaissance Imager

3. Into The Black Hole

4. The Future Echoes

5. The Edges Of Reality

The Review:

Defunct noise rock visionary band Sonic Youth experienced much popularity over its near 30-year career, including the commercially successful albums "Goo", "Dirty" and "Daydream Nation." Hardcore fans point to a recording like 1985's "Bad Moon Rising" to be the birth of what would be the definitive Sonic Youth sound: sheets of avant garde influences, rambunctious guitars and off-the-wall effects that were a fertile bed for Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon's irascible songsmithing.

In listening to psychedelic punk crew Wild Rocket. One cannot escape an ambience that feels very much like the most animated version of Sonic Youth circa "Bad Moon Rising" and possibly "Daydream Nation." In the case of the Dublin, Ireland outfit's sophomore recording, the emphasis on noise punk, like Sonic Youth, belies a uniquely crafty selection of music.

On the opener "Caught In Triangle Again" the tenor of the past is evident. You can almost lean back and picture what Moore would do with this, it is such a faithful interpretation. Make no mistake though, because the group is a high-quality original that stands on its own. The stupendous "Into The Black Hole" is a true testament to that.

When Wild Rocket released their debut, "Geomagnetic Hallucinations," in 2014, it earned a reputation for its immersive music and brainy, intriguing lyrical themes. In their return, the quartet of punk, doom, noise and rock tested performers give you that again, and more. With "Dissociation Mechanics" – an SY-style christening if ever there was one, by the way – that blend is all out on beautiful, chaotic display.

Wild Rocket's return is centered musically around several concepts, including the sea and deep space, as metaphors for cultural and global destruction. Effects laden vocals convey the depressive mood and the churning rhythm section, not to mention Jon Kelly's synthesizer work, make those stories feel like they're closing in on you. The listener has such a tempo on tracks like "The Future Holds" – steady, thick and swirling it is, among others.

"Dissociation Mechanics" is available here:

Band info: bandcamp || facebook

Wild Rocket - Geomagnetic Hallucinations (Album Review)

Album Type: Album

Date Released: July 1^st 2014

Label: Self Released

Geomagnetic Hallucinations - track listing:

1.Layers 08:11

2.Blowholes 05:01

3.A Better Place 06:39

4.Interplanetary Vibrations 09:24

5.Sulphur Assassins 05:13

6.Don't Ask When 04:56

Band Members

Bres - Rythmic Pulses

Jon K - Psychoacoustic Timbre

Moose - Sub Octaves and Communication

Niallo - Phase Changes

Review:

It was around this time last year that I found myself standing in front of a little stage in Dublin’s then “go to” heavy metal venue, The Pint. I’d made the journey up to good ol’ capital city to see Belfast’s Slomatics open up a fucking black hole right in front of my face, and that they did, as they always do, but they weren’t alone. Headless Kross were the headliners of a sickeningly appropriate line-up featuring Slomatics, Lurch, and Wild Rocket. So I’m there, facing the stage, body frozen in Wild Rocket’s suspension beam, unable to move an inch, forced to watch them glide through electric freak-out after electric freak-out as a projector screen flashes hypnotic images before our eyes, and I’m thinking; “What have you done to my brain? This is fantastic. Where am I?”

Listening to Wild Rocket’s Geomagnetic Hallucinations brings me right back to that venue on that very night. I remember vividly the hyperactive rock n’ roll space opera taking place on the stage, from start to finish. This album sees Wild Rocket’s electricity bottled, no added sugar, and it still tastes sweet a year later. I’ll try and keep the sci-fi references to a minimum.

Geomagnetic Hallucinations is ceaseless intensity and psychedelia with a larger-than-life, big sound that propels it far above the countless generic stoner/psychedelic slabs released every year. There’s no rehashed Kyuss tunes here, sorry folks, you can find that anywhere. Laggard Doom riffage and wailing space-synth meets Punk rock in hyperdrive on this forty minute joyride through the cosmic plasma pool, and you may be scraping your brains off your shirt by its end.

The album’s opener, “Layers”, sets the scene for you with some sluggish, doped-up, desert-evoking Doom, but that’s just the take-off sequence and after that it’s practically non-stop “I’m sweating fucking bullets, lads, get me off the wall” intensity. The record does take a detour from the helter-skelter on its longest track, “Interplanetary Vibrations”, however, offering up some riff that would fry the heads off Flower Travellin’ Band. For the most part though, this record is controlled chaos, every instrument bleeding into one another and feeding the sonic engine that drives it forward. Album closer “Don’t Ask When” shows one last ditch effort by the band to bum rush the sun, merging all of what makes the album great into one (just under) five minute sustained explosion.

In a few words; I’m excited about Geomagnetic Hallucinations. It’s an exciting record that never becomes a chore to listen to and offers up a few surprises along the way. It’s the sound of a band that’s, hopefully, ready to burst out of Dublin’s chest and brainwash their way to wherever the fuck it is they want to go. See you when the smoke clears.

Check the Band from Links Below

Facebook

BandCamp – Available to buy on DD/VInyl

Written by Liam Doyle