Post by Father_Doom on May 17, 2002 10:17:15 GMT -5
Band: Fiction featuring Tony Hill
Album: DNA-The Brain-The Universe
Format: CD
Label: Self-Released
Year: 2001
Time: 31 minutes
Track list:
You Wouldn’t Want to
Everybody Knows
Open Season
Conscious Accident
Could have been Great
But There Again
Cover photo and band site: dreamwater.net/music/fiction/open.html
Historically-minded stoner/doomsters know of High Tide’s amazing ‘Sea Shanties,’ a pioneering work in All that is Heavy in music from back in 1969. From the opening notes of ‘Futilist’s Lament’ there is no mistaking High Tide’s sound: amazing musicianship, uniquely distorted guitar, intense drums n’ bass, Simon House’s (later of Hawkwind) keening, guitar-like electric violin, and those uncanny Jim Morrison-like vocals singing of drug-soaked abstractions.
Sadly, High Tide broke up after another amazing (but proggier) album, but leading light Tony Hill is finally back with his new group, Fiction. What’s he been up to for all these decades? Well, he put out 4 albums under the High Tide name, and also a solo album on an obscure German label in the late 80s/early 90s. And although these albums definitely have their moments, they are at times somewhat patchy affairs, with just enough of the old High Tide sound to get you drooling. Nick Salomon and Ade Shaw of the hard-psych group Bevis Frond proved that Tony may have been “Pushed…but not Forgotten” (sorry, its an inside joke) by releasing Tony’s ‘Inexactness” on their Woronzow label last year, a blues-soaked psychedelic masterpiece that’s the best thing he’s done since the High Tide days. Yeah, Tony’s back!
And as good as ever. ‘DNA-The Brain-The Universe’ is chock-full of blues-based, intelligent, hard rock verging on metal. The lyrics have a lot of the psychedelic weirdness of High Tide, but seem a bit more linear. The album opener, ‘You Wouldn’t Want To,’ features a litany of things you wouldn’t want to do, culminating with the line “You wouldn’t want to be somebody else’s brain.” I could only grin. Hard to argue with that, eh? Tony’s voice seems to have lost little over the years; that trademark Morrison sound is still there. And that guitar! There is simply nothing on earth like it: staccato, chopped, heavy, distorted, amazing and unique. Bassist Dean Holt’s fingers seem to veritably dance over the frets at times, but he never fails to provide a solid bottom for the music, as does drummer Syd Farrell. No, this isn’t High Tide, but its not meant to be. Some of the spaciness is gone (though the lyrical abstraction is still there), but this is a chugging, bluesy alternative to the days of yore, and most satisfying. If you can listen to the almost Hendrixian jamming at the end of ‘But There Again’ and bang your head like a good soldier, then I reckon you’re getting the point.
This album is only available at the website and at gigs. So what? They’re as friendly and as easy to deal with as can be, and to tell you the truth I received my order in little more time than it takes to get an order from anyone here in the U.S. Dig on Fiction!!
Kevin McHugh