Dion Lunadon – S/T
Bassist for two of this millennium’s best bands in The D4 and A Place To Bury Strangers, Dion Lunadon has nothing left to prove. Why risk a solo album then after all this time? Simply, because these 11 songs spanning a searing 30 minutes sound like they’ve burned their way out of his brain from necessity, incapable of not then making it to record if you will. Never a wallflower, he now seems ready and willing too to make a grab for recognition as an artist in his own right, purposely positioning his debut album as anything but “background music”.
Abetted by APTBS drummer Robi Gonzalez and, on certain tracks, by Blaze Bateh from the similarly styled Bambara and on others by Castle Face house producer Chris Woodhouse, Lunadon’s S/T album is a varied one, unified of course by ever-present fuzz. It was Benjamin Franklin that said that “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes” and Lunadon adds a couple of sub-clauses to that sentiment on “Insurance, Rent And Taxes”, a minute-long garage-punk rager that comes off like The Stooges driving like they stole it, inevitable crash and broken glass included. With it we can be certain of at least one more thing in this world and that’s Lunadon’s love of blown-out noise, as if it were ever in question.
Over a killer A-side the trick is repeated time and again over bluesy stomps, sludgy metallic grumbles and spicy garage-thrash. Guitars surge through pedals like a Kevin Shields wet-dream on single “Com/Broke” and serrated organ-drone slices the bottom clean off the heavy feedback and sweet soloing of angry fuzz-monster “Fire”. More surprising, “Hanging By A Thread” is an instrumental series of kraut repeats set to stereophonic scan, the bass amp humming at 11 throughout until Lunadon’s reverbed vocal cameo creeps in to close.
From here on in, Lunadon’s tumble of sloppy, snotty rock music is perhaps less effective in general but rarely less interesting. “Howl”, for example, owes less to the Ginsberg epic of the same name and more to distorted garage-rock while “Ripper” is true to its name, unhinged and dangerous backwater blues a world away from the bleak noise-rocker that brings down the curtain. Risk is often worth embracing when done in a calculated manner; the odds of Lunadon coming up trumps when solo were never in doubt.
Best track: “Fire”
~Dion Lunadon is released 9th June 2017 via Agitated.~