ABOUT
The problem with music in the late 60's was the hippy shit, right? The goddamn peace and love stuff, the acoustic folkies, the going-to-San-Francisco-with-flowers-in-yr-hair.
But what if the 60's were as wildly murderous a time as these strange days? What if it was ALL Charlie Manson and napalm and muddy drugfreak people and Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker? Well, then, there'd only be, like, 5 bands left standing- the Stooges, the MC5, Hendrix, Blue Cheer, and Orange Sunshine.
- Sleadzegrinder
REVIEW
It was like discovering one of this obscure late-60's heavy rock bands, when I listened for the first time to ORANGE SUNSHINE. A friend of mine had bought the vinyl-edition, and when he put the needle in the groove, I was blown away by the raw heaviness of this power-trio. At least, there was this outstanding cover-artwork, showing the band on the top of an old German tank and all that in 3-D! The singing drummer looks like Jesus, while the bassplayer is wearing a helmet of the German Wehrmacht. Of course, he and the cool-looking guitarist are wearing black sunglasses, too! On the back of the album-cover, I found the year of release: 1969. Well, the illusion was perfect! Some weeks later I found out, that this date was just a fake, but my opinion about ORANGE SUNSHINE remains the same: fucking brilliant! It's real amazing, how authentic this band has captured the spirit of early Blue Cheer and early Stooges. But that's not all here! They drenched this nasty bastard in a bath of hardest boogie and rock 'n' roll and injected a bit of Motor City Blues in it. I guess, you can imagine that "Home Erectus" sounds as vintage as possible, without being old-fashioned. It's an explosive record that's potent enough to blast your ass to kingdom come. While the first edition of the album has been released via Motorwolf Records, this is the Japanese 2005 edition on Leaf Hound Records, and the first 500 copies comes with shaped 3-D glasses. At least, I like to add that I've seen ORANGE SUNSHINE on this year's 10th Roadburn Festival, and it was one of best rock 'n' roll shows in my life! I'm startin' to sweat, when I remember this loud and nasty gig.....
(KK)
Now, I have always been a fan of 60?s Garage psychedelia. Bands such as Cream, The Sonics, Iron Butterfly, The Stooges and MC5 to name a mere handful, were champions of a music, years ahead of its time utilising the limitations of recording quality to enhance the raw energy of their performances. Even though the music sounded tinny and rough, the excellence shone through. The fusion of blues, jazz and rock & roll exploding into a high octane explosion of a new exciting form of heavy rock which set the template for all rock music that followed. The foundations of rock history had been laid.
Now forty years later we have been blessed with many bands that have carried the torch and remained faithful to the energy passed from generation to generation. Such a band is not Orange Sunshine. This thoroughly irritating three piece from The Netherlands not only take the foundations of rock and piss on it, they have the audacity to recreate a bogus history claiming they were around in 1969 and this album is some masterpiece dug out of some rock archive, at least that is the gist I get from the Dutch liner notes.
A terrible Frankensteinesque experiment in Lo-Fi, detuning and feedback, Orange Sunshine try to sound like the bands I mentioned above but instead of improvised blues jams emerging from rigid musical standards we get cheese grater guitar solos, bee in a cup drums, virtually silent bass and plagiarised blues lyrics.
No effort has been made in learning how to play and there doesn?t seem to be any connection between the musicians except that they all probably think the trick to making great music is to get disgustingly stoned first. I could give you a track-by-track review but believe me there is no point, each song is like dying warthogs farting on out of tune guitars and bin lid cymbals with a drunken regurgitating elephant singing old John lee Hooker tunes. The only stand out track for me is track seven ?Cause I?m Your Man? because on the three occasions of which I have forced myself to listen to this talentless bilge I have not managed to make it past the first three minutes of this six minute epic of crap without turning it off, taking it out my car CD player and forcing myself to not throw it out of the window.
If you have the misfortunate to have someone play this codswallop at you proclaiming words like retro and tribute smack them in the face and play some Kyuss instead.
- Steve Williams
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