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The Lava Children
Self-Titled Mini-LP (Graveface)
With The Lava Children’s* self-titled
debut, the listener is immediately aware they’re hearing
something completely uncommon. In fact, The Lava Children
are something completely uncommon.
As the music industry becomes ever more jaded
and manufactured and music is treated like so much invaluable
garbage to be traded and tossed about freely, it seems like
hearing something that sounds totally new is becoming less
and less of a regular occurrence.
Here you’ll find no familiar “classic
rock overtones.” There are no hackneyed “angular
guitar tones”- in fact, you’re only occasionally
reminded that you’re even hearing instruments. From
the dreamy, weirdly programmed Colecovision-on-the-fritz nonsense
of opening track, “I Am a Pony,” to the underwater
opium cabaret wash of “Particles,” to the discordant,
drunk music box stagger of “Troll,” every track
on this mini-lp bears the same distinctive stamp of not sounding
a whole lot like anything else you’ve heard.
This music may have been found inside a rotting
old fish, plucked from a muddy, overgrown swamp and encrusted
with plankton and river rot. It could have been stuck in an
ice block in the far-flung pitch-black night of the frozen
tundra or growing out of a patch of moss and fungus on the
side of a mighty California redwood tree. It could’ve
been found buried in an Egyptian desert wasteland, firmly
clutched to the now-hollow chest of some bygone dusty old
corpse… and it just might be cursed. Hell- maybe it’s
from space, or some kind of message from the future.
But fact of the matter is it’s made by
a couple of Oklahomans who are soon to be Texans...Though
that doesn’t make it any less of a fascinating listen.
Close your eyes, turn off all the lights, and turn this album
up. See if the little hairs on the back of your neck aren’t
immediately standing at full attention as you find yourself
awash in weird, half-remembered memories of playing with a
dog you had when you were five years old, deep in the swiftly
darkening woods and far from home.
*The Lava Children are Sherri West and Taylor
Clark. They recorded the mini-lp in a secluded mountain fortress
(garage) in Altadena, CA. They like to mix-and-match polka
dots and stripes and have been living in sin since 1996.
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