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Daggers Mid Flight are based in Melbourne, Australia and is comprised of members from the following bands:
SPIDER GOAT CANYON
GOATWITCH
COMPUTER DYING
HOTEL WRECKING CITY TRADERS
CRUCIAL BLAST Says:
I've been a fan of Australian free-rock heavies Grey Daturas for a couple of years now, ever since the first time I heard their crushing album Dead In The Woods, which was later reissued through Crucial Blast. But it wasn't until late '07 that I found out that Melbourne, Australia was home to many more freaked out, heavy bands than just Grey Daturas. It was through the We Empty Rooms label out of Melbourne, run by Jem from the band Fire Witch, that I was turned on to this incestuous little scene of bands like Goat Witch, Computer Dying, Nunchukka Superfly, Spider Goat Canyon, Fire Witch and Hotel Wrecking City Traders, who frequently play shows together, often share members, and sometimes fuse together two or more bands into a single behemoth ensemble for large scale performances. All of these bands share a propensity for heavy, metallic riffage and brooding instrumental rock, but there is also a lot of improvisation going on with many of these bands both live and on record, and one of the most improvisation-lovin', sludgy-riff-crushin' of these bands is Spider Goat Canyon, a trio who has been around since 2003, releasing album after album of super heavy psych-metal and trippy cosmic improv-sludge through their very own label Chairfish. They also make up half of Goat witch, alongside their pals in Fire Witch, which is where I first heard about the band. They got in touch with Crucial Blast recently to see if we'd be interested in carrying the Chairfish releases, all of which are terrific, so getting these for the catalog was a no-brainer.
While almost all of the CDS that we just received from Chairfish are from the Aussie improv-psych-metallers Spider Goat Canyon, who run the label themselves, we also received this one disc from a project called Daggers Mid Flight. The self-titled full length is the first from the band, which is a side project formed by members of Spider Goat Canyon and some of their buddies in fellow Melbourne bands Computer Dying and Hotel Wrecking City Traders, and the ensemble was formed as an outlet for the friends to hook up and sink their collective fangs into almost stupefyingly stretched-out jams of ultra druggy space-sludge-metal. Like much of Spider Goat Canyon's recordings, this is all improvised, and the disc features two half-hour tracks of massive, crunchy sludge riffs that sound like they were pilfered off of Houdini that are turned into heaving, repetitious distorto trances plowing through sheets of cosmic fx and feedback, swirling guitar textures and low, rumbling amplifier ambience. The drumming goes from syrupy slow dirge beats to frenzies of percussive free-jazz thunder, the drummer smashing his kit in a blizzard of cymbal hiss and octopoidal chaos, then surging into hypnotic motorik beats. Imagine a stoned eternal jam session between Melvins, Grey Daturas and Hawkwind - sounds pretty great, right? This is pretty great. Each of the two tracks ("Less Like Concrete" and "Dust Settling In Lungs", respectively) start off with a simple, crushing riff that is played over and over again as they nail it into the ground, and as the band begins to fully kick in and the guitar fx begin to swirl around, the drumming locks into a heavy, propulsive groove and the music morphs into a metallic krautrock monster, hypnotic and grinding, surrounded by killer feedback solos and dissonant chiming rhythm guitars that actually kind of start to sound like Sonic Youth a little. Yeah, great stuff, another improv-sludge crusher from the kickass Melbourne underground. Comes with a Daggers Mid Flight sticker, too!
Debut full length improvised recording available now on Chair Fish Recordings
(Released March 8th, 2008)
