Artist: Boozewa
Album: First Contact (demo)
Label: Self-released
Release Date: 2/5/2021
Country: USA
With the most anarchic 90’s grungy spirit embracing the “smoke-in-the-veins” feelings of Stoner Rock, as in a dance between Seattle and Palm Desert, allied to an implicit feeling of denial of any sense of normality and common sense we have the pleasing “First Contact”, a demo released by the band Boozewa in early February.
Composed by Jessica Baker on bass and Mike Cummings on drums and vocals (both from the great Backwoods Payback) plus Rylan Casper on guitar, “First Contact” sound uncompromising and as if it was recorded and mixed on a Taskan (as it actually was) and praising the spontaneous and intrepid DIY spirit of a heavy music session with friends in a home studio or something similar. If you still haven’t been able to associate that with the nineties and Grunge, well, try again.
“Black Flag?” open the work just like the synthesis of this relentless nineties verve leaning into tones of desert trip, in muddy lysergic tones reminding you a little of what was presented in Spirit Caravan “Jug Fulla Sun”, just to quote. That pace like at any moment you can easily move from “full speed ahead” to almost “slow motion” or even “reverse”, ending in a Noisy Rock spiral of madness.
Complex and long is the name, simple is the path of “Those Who Deny The Existence Of Robots May, In Fact, Be Robots Themselves”, a basic instrumental stoner/doom track without a lot of layers and that serves more to connect “Black Flag” with the third sound of the work, “Full Tank”. This one, now a track more functional and compatible with the proposal that sometimes evokes some distant memories of the early days of Clutch, as a slowed and more stoned “Passive Restraints”. “No Name Maddox” is another instrumental track along the lines of “Those Who Deny The Existence Of Robots May, In Fact, Be Robots Themselves” and closes the job. Not big, but yet funny.
Being seen as a funny and unpretentious experimentation, the demo “First Contact” can sound pleasant and enjoyable. Nothing grand or based in lots of finesse or revolutionary production, of course. But a good activity with friends in the midst of a time when the right becomes uncertain in the blink of an eye, and where reminiscing about the simplicity of a home studio, a basement or revisiting those old tapes of the nineties can be essential.
Listen to and order the demo below:
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