Electric Tibet - Fallout Blues EP

[ghost]

i first heard of electric tibet on radio scotland, catching the end of their first radio session. i was of course surprised to hear that they were based in aberdeen. next thing i know i'm sharing a bill with sandy galloway (aka sandy future) in a quiet venue on a bright saturday afternoon. we were soon swapping cds and i think i got the better deal. when i heard local label fat hippy records were releasing a four track ep, i hot-footed it along to the launch and grabbed a copy. since then it's never really been that far away from my cd player, but i've been a bit lax with reviewing as you no doubt realise. ok this is ep is 11 months old, but it's still available and still bloody good. seek out a copy while you can!

lead track "is it fear?" unleashes razor-sharp guitars desperately spitting chords at the feet of the steady energetic drummer, hooking the listener from the start. when vocalist sandy's deep burr becomes the eye of this sonic hurricane, you'll be forgiving for checking the inlay as his is a voice that easily draws comparisons with Iggy Pop. next up we have "fallout blues", a gentle instrumental track with the occasional smattering of light piano - is this the same band? it's a soundtrack to a 4am coffee watching unfortunates on their way to work. there's a real hint of menace in this one. "surfer rozanne" is an apt surf blues number which must have been in the running for lead track - it would have been my choice - featuring even more energy than the "is this fear?" and including a fantastic double-tracked guitar solo, this is a song that wouldn't have been out of place on the pulp fiction soundtrack had it been recorded a few years earlier and placed in the right hands. songwriting kudos for the hook line "there's a place in the garden where the dead leaves fall and nothing new grows there". next we have another instrumental - rosebud - perhaps the antithesis to fallout blues? this tracks pulls the listener along at a gallop, another soundtrack, this time to coincide with our hero driving a long straight road at sunrise. the happy ending and credits are in sight. of course the menace suggested in "fallout blues" chooses this as its cue and hello, if it's not mr death and his newly sharpened scythe. what's that? oh you're not taking any prisoners today are you? sorry. thwack.

those of you regularly reading these reviews will know that i am a bit of a closet rocker - although it's got to be sharp and exciting/experimental to hold my interest for long (before 10,000,000 bland cds are thrust in my direction). electric tibet don't just fall neatly into this category, they level the competition and build a whole new playing field on top of the twisted corpses of their contemporaries. i'm rather excited and proud that aberdeen has produced at least two of the finest bands skirting around the rather large "rock" genre (the other being saint maybe) and can only hope that this, their first release, propels their popularity with those living outwith the area.