Totally in-the-red froth from these NYC scumtrons. Like weirdo standouts from OZ the Sick Things, this is a complete baaad-ass hate fest with sub-dermal bass, paper thin razor guitar and Axis of Evil drumfuckery.
Song: Cuckoo
Absolutes
Eight songs that take apart rock music atom by atom so that you’re left with just a skeleton of sound. Sightings still use the tools of the trade — guitar, bass and drums — to take both the rock and the roll out of rock ‘n’ roll. Reference weirdo deconstructo outfits like Einsturzende Neubauten, (mid-period) Black Dice, and Mainliner. This is the sound between the guitar strings, inside the bass amp, and within a drumstick. Yes, the truth. If punk rock used to mean fucking shit up and doing it your own way, this record erects a mile high middle finger facing the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Song: Reduction
Sightings – Arrived in Gold
Arrived in Gold
Never before has a band managed to erase themselves. New York City’s Sightings have risen to the challenge of negation with this ‘what the fuck’ of a record that rolls the twenty sided dice to dematerialize any trace of guitar, bass and drums into proton dust floating microns on top of the speaker cone. Minimal, yes. Previous records have gone from favorites at magazines as chocolate and peanut butter as the Wire and Terrorizer. Past records have been steaming knee burn befuddled by German technoid impulse and Yoko-damaged Beatles-busting intensity. A new icy coolness is added to the steaming soup this time allowing the sounds of mouth breathing to open up the record into a drug-fueled nightclub beast humping a bass bin as the sun rises.
Song: Dudes
Sightings – Through the Panama
Through the Panama
Bass, drum and guitars meshed together with a synthetic twine envisioned in
future think tanks. Literally the sound of human progress darkened with a profound
fidelity so loud the dark matter of the universe quivers in a deadly
orgasm. Guitar, bass and drums reconfigured for a new purpose. This is the band’s sixth album and takes the notch so much higher than previous efforts in terms of songwriting and production. With ANDREW W.K. as a producer,
some of the caustic curtains that swathed past albums have been parted to reveal a coldly pulsing artificial heart. And the beat of this heart sounds off in an alien tongue of bass and drums. Guitars descend like unforgiving sheets of napalm from the skyline. Songs pop out of this miasma that tic k off icy coolness with piano and vocal stylings. Indeed, hot and cool. To accentuate the difference this album has versus previous Sighting’s records, a Scott Walker cover is included. This is a rock album, but a rock for times coming, a sound of future days.