Green Milk From the Planet Orange
City Calls Revolution
Beta-lactam Ring
I love it when iTunes comes across an album that is from so far off in left field that it’s dubbed “unclassifiable.” Though I’ve yet to slip Green Milk From the Planet Orange into my roommate’s Powerbook, I’m pretty sure that’s the best label that could be attached to this madness. Approximating a radio signal beamed from a distant region of the solar system, from a planet in the final throes of fiery destruction, City Calls Revolution is truly one of a kind. It adheres to the lunatic intensity of garage rock, but cycles its riffs through a random number generator to produced a jazzy explosion of noise and an absurdly frightening jam band aesthetic. Instead of coming in short bursts, the band links together its disparate musical ideas, even to taper down the frenzy for emphatic bullhorn political sermonizing in both English and Japanese to steal the spotlight.
The opener, “Concrete City Breakdown,” is the highlight album, nicely juxtaposing the weightlessness of electronic space-rock with the terra firma destruction wrought with the band’s organic instruments. At twenty minutes, the track is just the right length for the group’s gonzo jazz/metal/hardcore to run its course. Of course, this doesn’t diminish the genius and power of the two shorter numbers, “OMGS” and “Demagog,” or the nearly forty minute closer “A Day in the Planet Orange.” It’s all thoroughly mind-blowing stuff, and it wouldn’t be an undue amount of praise to say that this disc does much to rejuvenate both punk and psychedelica for the ’00s.
Beta-lactam Ring: http://www.blrrecords.com
