(Psychedelic, Noise, Improvisation) Sunburned Hand of the Man - Z - 2007, FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Everything is abbreviated on the Sunburned's Z, from the band's name on down. For their first full-length album on Ecstatic Peace, the collective typically (formerly?) known as Sunburned Hand of the Man have scaled back to become simply the Sunburned, and they have streamlined their sound as well, evidently in quest of an express route to extra-dimensional nirvana. Gone-- for the most part-- are the expansive tribal jams and creaky backwoods funk that characterized such top-notch Sunburned releases as Headdress or No Magic Man, replaced instead by a far more conventional noise-rock strategy.

Regardless of what name they're traveling under, the Sunburned have continued to produce and release so many recordings that it becomes difficult to make any grand, sweeping announcements about any one individual album. But suffice it to say that Z definitely ranks among the heaviest and most No Wave-influenced artifacts in their prodigious catalog. As with many a noise act before them, John Moloney and company here seem to retreat to the squalling riff destruction of the Dead C or early Sonic Youth almost as if reverting to their natural default setting. And though the work they capture in this feral state makes for some fine bottle-smashing entertainment and plenty of ephemeral thrills and spills, Z remains one of the group's least distinctive releases to date and is so unlikely to reach "go-to" status in your already teetering Sunburned stack.

Moloney has described Z as being an acknowledgment of "infinity and the double dimension we all live in but don't fully understand." With that in mind Sunburned have here designated each of the album's five tracks with an ascending number of infinity symbols. The first of these pieces commences with a brief snatch from one of the group's familiar pan-ethnic rituals, before suddenly dropping out-- with no further preamble-- into a maelstrom of distended noise. Beneath thick curtains of soaring feedback and amp distortion, Sunburned's elastic rhythm section rolls and roils through the album's first two tracks in continuous free-rock turmoil, their ramshackle psych-rock grooves recalling Acid Mothers Temple at their most fried.

Sunburned pause for a brief gulp of brown oxygen on the album's third track, on which some of the collective's latent Butthole Surfers tendencies are allowed room to fester. As Moloney gibbers with an incoherent ecstasy, the guitars scribble mysterious figures on the cave walls as landmarks for future pilgrims. So rejuvenated, the collective is then ready to address the album's final two mammoth improvisations (that would be "four infinity symbols" and "five infinity symbols"). On these long-winded tracks the group's sound mutates into increasingly unrecognizable forms, their squiggly blasts of analog electronics nodding more to Wolf Eyes and their disorienting ilk than to the group's own past wide-open cooperative ceremonies. As Z screeches to a close with the sound of a solo human voice electronically dilating into oblivion, perhaps the Sunburned are suggesting that in the face of such infinity, each of us must ultimately approach alone. Hopefully, however, this album does not indicate that on their path forward, SHotM will feel the further need to shed or otherwise abandon the potent communal narcosis that has carried them this far.

-Pitchfork