Nudity – Is God’s Creation
Blown-out krautadelic rockers Nudity formed in Olympia, Washington in 2004 and back then, amongst others, the cult band comprised Dave Harvey (guitar) and Jon Quitner (bass – though Josh Haynes of Ethan Miller’s ferocious Feral Ohms plays bass on the majority of the tracks featured on Nudity Is God’s Creation), both of whom were former guitarists of the even more cult Tight Bro’s From Way Back When. Together, as Nudity, they managed a couple of self-distributed CDRs and a 12” on Discourage, relying mostly on their ferocious live reputation at the time to get the word out.
Harvey would eventually get round to an LP last year, but no long-playing document of the original line-up was ever committed to tape. Is God’s Creation is a double-album retrospective of recordings that date from 2005 to 2010. As such, all the tracks from their garage-rocking S/T and loose jamming Winter In Red CDRs are represented, so too several unreleased and live bonus tracks. The opening suite wails through heavy lo-fi, spacey middles full of droning feedback and slashing solos. Harvey’s queasy vocal whines like it’s being dragged out by warp speed, pummelling percussion and breathless proto-punk set ablaze my skronking sax work. Offering some tonic to the rage, solar winds and nebulous sitar slowly coalesce too into soothing balances of squealing guitar fuzz and acid-soaked haze.
Hawkwind-style grooves naturally dominate elsewhere, flute-abetted rock and roll taking a literal “ride through space and time” on “Moon Druids”. Influence then becomes content with a suitably shambolic cover of the searing, blues-bolstered standard “Hurry On Sundown”. Better still is the unreleased version of “Elevate In Rotation”. A track heard before in some form on the Live Baltimore/Olympia CDR, it is all killer here, strutting like The Stooges while its solos take a space-walk. Evolving through spidery garage-psych into super-awesome wah wahs, all ten minutes of the similarly unreleased “Rubicon” are also worth the entrance fee alone.
As the drugs really start to take hold, the Winter In Red mini-album heaves into view, motorik beats building into a classic freak-out. Becoming an unstoppable mass at this point, “Make Up” is a twelve-minute cover of Japanese longhairs Flower Travellin Band. An ambling bout of sweet soloing that’ll get all the air-guitar heroes pogoing, it then becomes an extended jam that descends into fuzzed-out scree. Sounding like launchpad engines tethered to the ground, something’s gotta give and, the beast muzzled at last, the album closes out with the side-long “Le Premier Voyage Du Capitaine” (recorded live at the Yes Yes, Olympia), a track that drones on for all its uncomfortable 21-minute run-time, sitar tuning gently creaking like a galleon in port. Putting the psychological in the psychedelic, Nudity threaten even when meditative – their niche legacy assured now that oral history has become legend.
Best track: “Rubicon”
~Nudity Is God’s Creation is out now via Cardinal Fuzz. Comes with Riso-printed insert.~