You know I only walked into my local record store to buy sunroof! but walked out with this as well. The Grey Daturas are a trio from Melbourne who have been churning out their particular brand of antipodean noise for a couple of years now. Some don’t regard what they do as noise, and I get the hesitation. For the most part the Grey Daturas churn out a wonderfully satisfying brand of heavy psychedelic guitar workout but they also allow a more experimental, and dare I say noisy, side to come to the fore. This is a very good record. It’s actually the first full length I’ve heard from them and it threw me in many ways. There are only seven tracks on Return to Disruption but they seem to cover a bundle of different noise style over the length of the album.
When I was listening to the first track I thought: Lightning Bolt but less arty farty and less annoying. But if that’s the only thing I’d heard I would have developed a very wrong impression of this very impressive band. The second album titled track owes more to the kitchen-sink sound and drone experiments of Sandoz Lab Technicians. The third track starts off sounding like Lightning Bolt before taking an abrupt left turn into Birchville territory. A pure drone track was certainly not expected but considering that I’m a bit partial to droneI was pretty happy with its inclusion. I suppose the one major impression I get from listening to Return to Disruption is the heavy influence of The Dead C. Just like the Dead C, the Grey Daturas are not afraid to mix up their styles.
By the time we get half way through we’re firmly in the land of doom before descending into a psych-metal freakout. There is still time for another avant-garde Dead C-esque noise experiment before the whole thing is closed out by two psych metal melt downs (think Boris ). It’s a great album and well worth picking up if you’re interested at all in noise, drone, sludge psych and doom.
This was recorded in 2006 mixed last year and released a couple of weeks ago. Somehow I don’t think this band are going to be churning out a shit load of product any time soon. Return To Disruption almost plays like a well thought out noise sampler and certainly puts Australian noise on the map even if it does remind me of a stack of bands from across the Tasman Sea.
Live in Oakland 2007
Ducks Battle Satan 