You get to read another story!
That's right, just what you've been waiting for. The opportunity to read a random internet denizen's poorly constructed, entirely unrevised short work of fiction. Today, I will review Black Mountain's In the Future. I'll do the regular run down of the technical aspects and a paragraph or two or critique. Then it's time for some verbal dickery. So, if you're not interested, just skip the last half of the review.
Black Mountain - In the Future
http://www.discogs.com/Black-Mountain-In-The-Future/release/1206310
Black Mountain doesn't get the respect they deserve. Hailing from Vancouver, the have consistently put out really good albums since 2005. Their sophomore release In the Future came out in 2008 and was definitely one of my favorite albums of that year. I will review it today. Right now. Just after this.
The album is pressed on two LPs and comes in a gatefold heavyweight jacket. This release also comes with a digital download. The front of the jackets features a geometric shape cutaway from a strange alien landscape. The colors are red washed, it seems to be a Martian landscape. The artwork is framed in black.
The back of the jacket features the same geometric shape holding up the track listing.
The interior of the gatefold displays a surreal piece of nature. Inverted deer graze and water before a man in a peacock blouse. The disembodied head of a young child watches over the scene. This shit is trippy and awesome.
The vinyl itself is standard weight with custom labels. The album also comes with an insert. One side is black, the opposite displays more of the strange Martian landscape as well as the lyrics.
The music itself is fucking awesome. A definite retro feel ties together a sprawling psychedelic odyssey. Fuzzed out guitars are chopped up with beautiful vocal interludes. The whole album really jams, and though it does drag (notably during Bright Lights) it stands on its own as a really good composition. There are a few tracks for everyone here, a crowd-pleaser. I have spun this album multiple, multiple times and still find something new each time. I would not hesitate to (and have often) recommend this album to almost anyone. I would force fans of any variety of stoner- to purchase it.
At under $15 brand new, this is a really good buy.
Now for some word phrases from my brain. Hold on to your ass enclosures.
Bright Lights
Oozed.
He would later describe them as having oozed. As they crested the hill, the lights had a weight. The clung to brown grass as they approached. Surrounding, suffocating their autumnal, brittle stalks. His feet were as immobile as the grass, the pancoloric wash enveloped him.
There was darkness then. More than darkness though, nothingness. He did not exist in any rational sense of the word. Incapable of thought or observation, this realm held to perceivable qualities. With no reference the delineation of events was impossible, so he drifted there. Out of time.
All at once, the boundless became bounded. The empty expanse of nothing collapsed into itself, through itself. It burst out the other side into the endless possibility of existence. Dendrite and axons coalesced into nuerons, capillaries connected to arteries, ligament found bone. He was once again whole. A dusty red landscape expanded before him, peppered with deep blue lakes. It seemed lifeless initially but his eyes began to pick out faint stirrings in the distance.
Timidly, he tested his newly born legs. The ground felt dry and shifted easily beneath his soft leather moccasins. His thigh muscles felt unnaturally powerful, like he might accidentally jump off the face of this alien landscape. Squatting low, he reached his infant arm from inside his smooth silken blouse. The red dirt was pebbly, it seemed to suck the water out of his fingers as it ran through his grip. He brushed his long auburn hair from his face and surveyed the passage to the nearest cerulean lake. Not far off in the distance, he saw it rimmed with white sharp looking trees.
He hesitantly took a step, leaning forward. The weightlessness was disconcerting at first, but soon he loped toward his destination. Desolate though the landscape was, it had its own sense of beauty. Rock formations funneled him toward the lake, the seeming remnants of an ancient river. As he approached the edge of the water he began to realize that it was populated with a strange creature. Familiar though, but the colors were all wrong. He would later swear they were whitetail deer, Blacktails was the name he would give them as their colors were inverted. They grazed on stubbly grasses and watered eagerly on the vibrant blue water. He leaned down and scooped a handful of the too blue water, smelling it. Sweet and floral, it triggered a thirst previously unknown. Tipping his handful of water back into his throat, he gagged. The water was undrinkable, a chemical slurry.
He looked up at the creatures around him. He noticed then, floating in the distance, a porcelain child like face. It gazed down at him, he became the focus of its attention. Seemingly in concert with the face, the Blacktail turned their head in his direction. They grunted and huffed, stamping the ground as they began to approach him. They were on him then, and their hooves were sharp. His flesh was exculpated from his bones as the foul creatures teeth found his marrow. A scream tried to escape his lips but the creatures pounded him relentlessly. His vision faded to a yellow white as he felt his consciousness evaporate.
"Dave?!"
"Fucking wake up Dave. Why the fuck are you lying next to the latrine? Phish just fucking rocked an amazing jam and where the fuck were you?"
Dave groggily rolled over, brushing the specks of urinal cake from his beard. He glimpsed a few deer in the tree stand near the latrine, bounding off now that their salt lick was awake.
"Fuck man," Dave said. "I think I was just on fucking Mars or some shit. These whitetails man, but wait though. They were like opposite colored man. Like fucking Blacktails or some shit. They ate my brains dude."
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