Helmet Room Rec. Pee-Pee : Castile Jackine is vooded at Broonus Mousin : volume 1 (US,2008)***°
Helmet Room makes once more a good choice and decision of a band’s release. Again, this one too is hardly categorisable, well arranged, inspired, so more than interesting.
A strong quality is that they are a large, well hanging together band (almost with the energy of a commune, so also one with energy, one of musical enjoyment, and respect). Despite certain multiple personalities noticeable, everything has it’s place. Mostly there’s a fronting lead singer/songwriter, Doo Crowder, with his guitar, for a completely different song near the end, a soulful-rockier with 70s in mind approach is provided by Holly Thomas.
The songs are clear, they are sparsely arranged but with full capacities and range, giving more than once a chamber-orchestration feeling in them, while to much surprise switching the arrangement and structure of arrangements quite often. Incredible for this is the second track, “Madness Song (remix)” starting like a funny bluesy song on guitar, with a knocking on the door rhythm on some exotic toy drum, making the lead singer nuts for “who’s there?”, something real is happening here which is very entertaining. Not only the voice changes shape in a mix that brings it to flavours of calling 60s (effects) to an 80s effect on the voice (with vocoder and a reminder of the electropop period), back to all sorts of arrangement ideas including electric sitar, chorus parts and lots more. Also the next two songs are attractive, from happy to slightly sad, but always with surprises in the arrangements, with so many people adding sparsely their own thing. On the 3rd track, “love needs a quivering, restless, aching fire to lay its head on”, the recording of the guitar part is suddenly broken into rhythmical pieces or beat intervals, while the other layers like the singing and the arrangements are not, which I think sounds very clever, once more. Also these tracks have not only a clever structure, the arrangements have something chamber-like without being so. This is followed by a freakout jam, showing once more some range of inspirations (from free jazz, in a folky way, to folk, in a jazzy way, to psychedelica, in a free jazz way, to improvisation, Chinese guitar playing, but also with a heavily distorted electric bass here and there, and with strange hand percussions like on cereal bags and washboards, being between loose and structured, and with hanging together spontaneous interaction. Then suddenly they show other aspects, of heavier bluesy rock, forgetting the 70s and very distinctive from it because of the acoustic hand percussion and absence of real drums, and more something of that communal folk feeling to keep it together. This blues hangs to folk psych and jazz as well. Then “I love U 2 much” adds the soulrock (female vocals) to that 70s aspect, for the same reasons belong to something new, a bit more loose from restriction. Also the last song, electric guitar driven bluesrock (male vocals) distinctive in itself the same way through a more handclapping rhythm section, a soulful fun-making improvisation which very spontaneously suddenly brings in as in an improvisation the Beatles song “Hey Jude”. I am already convinced without further proof that this group must be worth seeing live.
Participants: Nathan Barsness on tom, snare and tambourine, Doo Crowder on lead guitar & vocals, organ, door, Jivanda Das on electric sitar, synth, Mark Fowler on bass, background vox, Esther Hernandez on flute improvisations, Lauren Higgins on violin arrangements, background vox, Yuzo Nieto on alto sax, guitar, background vox, Seema Pandya on cajon, cowbell, French horn, background vox, Danny Shyman on percussion, organ, synth, sequencing, guitar, Holly Thomas on lead and background vox, flute, organ, percussion, Shana Vorhauer on cello improvisations / arrangements, background vox.
