Holy studded assflap, Batman! This thing is sick! DNA spool of dysentery sick! Contagious contamination sick! Oh yeah!The Permanent Records writeup of Running describes them as "psych/punk." I take that to mean "psych" as in "psychotic," not "psychedelic." There's nothing psychedelic about this record. Unless you yourself are a bit psychotic. This is a yowling, yammering acid bath of reverb and mutilated howling.
But there's obvious artifice to Running's bathroom-cleaner binge. One of the great conceits of noise rock is that you can just turn on a switch and the music will create itself. WRONG. At first listen, this album sounds like a collection of fragments. The cymbals fade in and out of focus, songs fall off a cliff instead of ending, and I think the guitarist just leaned his guitar against the amp and walked away, with the tape running, in between takes.
But then you start to realize that those transitions are a little too sharp, that surf guitar intermezzo at 1:30 into "Garbage Truck" too clever, for this to be a bunch of SAIC amateurs fiddling with feedback. The opening ~5 minute dirge, "Garbage Truck," is actually a series of snarling snippets that (I'm assuming) captures the band's live sound well: the transitions are seamless, the assault pacifies you into inattention, and towards the end of the set/song the random changes in tempo give you a horrid taste of vertigo. "Pillow Talk Revisited" begins as a standard punk riff Varispeeded to death, before another amazing tempo shift that drags the band back to their usual pukeoid pace. A few posts ago, I described Running as the perfect soundtrack to rhythmic convulsions, and this LP fully supports said statement.
You'll love Running if, like this upstanding citizen, your wine never comes in a corked container.
Gurgling bloody mess. Support some righteous doods and buy said gurgling bloody mess here.
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