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Flight of the Solstice Queens is an album so refreshingly diverse, it’ll leave you scratching your head wondering if it’s the same person (in this case, Chester Hawkins), though like Butthole Surfers, Blue Sausage Infant maintains a cohesion that keeps the songs in perspective.
The opening “Gezundheit!” is the creepy clown equivalent of Negativland, a sound collage of strange loops of children’s records, a banjo and perhaps a nasal decongestant commercial, though it’s hard to tell. The title track and “Radiant Arc” are driving Krautrock-y tunes in the mode of Harmonia or Faust or a much darker version of Neu!. “Astray Man” recalls the noise rock of The Cows and Butthole Surfers, all fuzzy bass over a pounding beat, screeching guitars and eerie disembodied vocals that could pass for either Shannon Selberg or Gibby Haynes, depending on which comparison you prefer. The remaining noise tracks recall CCCC‘s wall of static (“Space”) and Trance‘s psychedelic drone “Locust of Control,” while “Why You Hate Salamanders” and “The Sentimental Communist” are nightmarish soundscapes along the lines of rhBand and Yen Pox/Blood Box.
It’s really quite incredible to hear an album with such diverse elements come together under a singular vision. It’s not just a noise/psychedelic/Krautrock/noise rock album, it’s all of those (and more) at once. I don’t think I could ask for more – and now I don’t need to.
