Astral Gunk are four Sackville-based musical miscreants blazing out of New Brunswick and just being totally fresher than anyone. Driving, weird, smashed up rock, psych that really moves.. they bill themselves as “Post-Post-Rock”, which could be a recursive way of arriving back at the part when rock was fun, irreverent, strange and asploding with energy. These basement jams fit no mould, spazzing out in all directions with a no-wavey garagey flavor driving things. The tape starts of with “Astral Theme”, dropping some Monks like chords, straight up Nuggets style, that swerves into a feedbacking, harmonic laden groove that carries equal parts Sonics as it does UJ3RK-5, infectious and ass kicking right out the box. This jam would just own if busted out in a packed DIY space, sparse Stooges vocals stab here and there and it ends in a twister of delay feedback.
“I’m a Wreck” pounds into being right away, unkempt vocals bounces off an undeniable guitar line and culminates in “I’M FUCKIN’ ELVIS, BITCH!”, a snapper of a break and the party crashes right back in. “Jaded Pilgrim” offers more high kicks and swag with a Velvets affectation and a darker sound, but still highly charged.. that’s one thing I love about this tape, it’s balls deep rock, full on, not a mid tempo track in the bunch, just straight up red line energy. The beautiful feedbacking buzzsaw psych noise breakdown on “Hedonism” is as close as one gets to drawing a breath throughout this recording, but it merely serves as torque to snap back into the onslaught. “Last Part” ends the show with some mathspazzingly fun guitar shred all the while held up by the very capable band. These dudes can play the shit out of their shit, but it’s all doused in a lo-fi basement psych sound that gives it it’s edge, totally. One of my albums of the summer for sure.
