atomic forest

So I got into this album recently- its been in my car for like a year or so and I never really gave it a proper listen. I tend to sleep on things real hard for whatever reason, then when I finally listen I'm all blown away and I feel like an idiot. Anyway I needed some palate cleansing after playing out whatever was on rotation before, and this has been amazing.



here is the link to the full album on youtube for your listening pleasure

So I think I originally got into this thanks to Dawg- thanks Dawg! She had told me about this Thai cover of Black Sabbath Iron Man that had been playing on the radio (she knows I'm totally into Sabbath and shit that's mysterious sounding, or like in another language) and so i was scoping the album out on amazon (its a compilation of thai psych rock shit, and its great- its on finders keepers- a record label devoted to reissues and issues of unreleased stuff-GREAT psych stuff from all over the world), and instead of actually buying that album at the moment I ended up buying this album which is a compilation of indonesian funk! on now-again records (which I think is like a spinoff of stones throw, of madlib and good-turn-of-the-millenium-hip-hop fame)






So just a side note about this album before I get back to the Atomic Forest: This shit rules. No- you don't understand- this shit RULES. I played this shit the FUCK out. So it came out on now-again records and this dude Egon I guess is like the sound selector- I used to listen to- and FUCKING LOVE-his mixes on the stones throw podcast back in the 00's- so its great that he has his whole own reissue shizz.

So back to the Atomic Forest

 

Its another great now-again release. Totally bitchin shredding AND funk- whaaat?? It's great in that it sort of encapsulates all these qualities of music that I adore, which got me thinking- what do I really look for in music? what the fuck am I actually loving about music when I love music? How do I organize my thoughts about music into a parsimonious and replicable rating system? So, being that I am a goddamn scientist by professional training, I decided to create a rating scale based on all my favorite qualities of music that I love. I have created a list of qualities that is totally up for revision and suggestion, so that we can get it just right. Please feel free to weigh in on them. Here they go:

heaviness
flower-power (aka scooby-doo-itude)
mysteriousness (perhaps words in another language or unintelligible, or no vocals at all)
fuzz
rawness
shredding
funk
swampiness

So I figure, scale of 1 to 5 stars- 5 being, for example, most heavy, and 1 being least heavy, breezy even.  flower-power/butt-rock-rage. mysterious/real-fucking-vanilla. you get the idea. We can totally do half steps too for increased accuracy.

So what I'm getting at here is that Atomic Forest brings many of these qualities to life. Let's try out the rating system:

heavy
While some tracks are certainly heavier than others, lots of it is pretty upbeat and funky, so its only getting 3 on heaviness. "mary long" is prolly the heaviest on here and its great.

FP
this shit virtually maxes out on flower power, especially on the cover of "sunshine day"

mysterious
They are kinda getting a pass on mysteriousness since they are from another era and from india, but they are singing, and its in english, but they put the fuzz on it, and some songs have no vocals, so 3.5/5, not too bad. They also have tablas on the cover of Beatles tracks, so that's a plus.

fuzz
Atomic Forest is practically maxing out on the fuzz too, bring it, yall. 

raw
All this shit sounds like it was recorded in a day, so bringing the rawness.

shred
I'd like to give it more on shredding, because when they do shred its fucking AWESOME, but about half the songs are more mellow and less shredding, so docked points for that. The best shred track on here is the cover of "foxy lady": fuzzy, 7 minute shred that was in my head for an entire Appalachian trail segment once (it was kind of enjoyable and maddening at once)

funk
While the bass is totally un-chuk-ity and everything, the indianness kinda kills some of the funk factor, so 3 stars on funk

swamp
You kinda gotta be from the south to bring the swamp rawk if you ask me, but its all hot n swampy in india I'd imagine, at least somewhere in india it must be, so 1.5 stars on swampiness- nice job!

Atomic Forest was another band that changed lineups about a million times, so finding photos of whoever actually played all this shit at the time it was recorded was a chore. So here is one of about five of their guitarists- who was playing on that jimi hendrix cover- Neel Chattopadhyaya. Thanks to this photo of Neel, they can get bonus points for lookin fine as hell. Maybe I should add that category to the over all band review system, because honestly, its kinda important to me. The lord loves a lawng haired man!

foxiness 

"the jimi hendrix of india"



Nice job, Atomic Forest! Laterz, yall.