NGL035 - The Lost Domain 'An Unnatural Act' - Edition of 500
An Unnatural Act
What you do....
You take what you have....a resonator guitar, a mandolin, 3 fuzz boxes, a 5 watt valve amplifier, a 44 gallon drum, some old records....and you acquire a 3-in-1 home stereo with dual tape decks with record and overdub functions....and you tap into what you’ve been listening to, what you’ve been living your whole life, a stream running free through pre-war blues, songsters and saints....and you feel it when you’re sober even, and you do it when you’re fall down drunk....and somehow, over a couple of tumbledown, turnaround months in 1990 you commit An Unnatural Act.
And it contains both kind of breakdowns, it has stolen voices, a cover (sort of), a love song, a piece by Samuel Beckett, sensitive feedback, a back beat, insensitive jokes, the sound of losing it, a tribute, a debt being paid in part, a groove found, an entirety.
And it’s more noise than you can bear.
And it’s deeper and bluer than you can feel.
And you know it won’t come this way again.
The Lost Domain An Unnatural Act LP (Negative Guest List)
I nearly tapped out just at the sight of this Lost Domain LP… their previous Blondes Chew More Gum double LP was about as much drunken outback Fall worship I could take. So glad I dropped the needle on this one though, because it’s an entirely different beast, and I mean beast – right from the start The Lost Domain send their noisy transmission through a helicopter’s spinning blade, simultaneously disorienting and pleasing me. They follow that with a punchy sheet-metal beat and guitars so distorted and painful, it’s as if the Saw movie franchise chose Fenders instead of humans for its victims. If I think of the best possible outcome of a Thurston Moore / Sunburned Hand Of The Man collaboration, or Tetuzi Akiyama reforming A Band, I think of what I hear on An Unnatural Act; seriously, this thing cuts right to the bone and doesn’t even flinch. It’s bittersweet to know that this band is no longer with us, but I’m thankful that such a recording made it where it belongs – a thin, shiny slab of black plastic. (Yellow Green Red - March '13)
Edition of 500 copies LP, recorded in 1990, from these wild free/blues/no wave Australian legends: The Lost Domain took inspiration from original country blues, fife and drum troupes and the American Primitive stylings of John Fahey and railroaded them through the feedback worshipping jams of The Velvet Underground and the deformed rock/roll refusal of primo No Wave to generate the kind of carburettor dung that would’ve floated Lester Bangs’ corpse. And it’s fitting that “Sweet Haunch Woman” here is dedicated to Bangs, a track that boasts the kinda no fidelity = feral form equation of prime Rallizes w/Alan Vega style ‘billy-isms over descending bombs of fuzz guitar and a commitment to the demands of freak that is truly pre-‘Rock’. “Funeral March For Charley Patton” is an amazing endless jam for pure amplifier heat and scudding electricity that floats monologues from Booker White and Bozie Sturdivant straight to the heart of the sun. “Radio 1” presents a setting for Samuel Beckett’s radio play “Rough For Radio 1” that sounds more like Faust’s “Krautrock” before the searing gods-of-thunder dual guitar epiphany of “Lithia” that comes over like Fushitsusha play the Patti Smith Band’s “Abyssinia”. Can’t think of anyone that so effortlessly joins the dots between the refusenik energies of original field hollers and blues breakdowns and contemporary underground scorch but this is a peerless set of acid-damaged juke and pretty much has to be heard to be believed. Cover portrait of John Fahey is just so much gravy. Very highly recommended! - Volcanic Tongue
credits
released December 19, 2012
Side A:
Sun House
Sic 'em Dogs on
Sweet Haunch Woman
Funeral March for Charley Patton
supported by 9 fans who also own “An Unnatural Act”
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