Magnetix – Live In San Francisco
Dude, what do you mean you haven’t seen Magnetix live? The legendary Looch Vibrato and Aggy Sonara have been crushing it for best part of this millennium and they’re are absolute raw power on stage. Luckily, Castle Face got your back and they’ve snagged a rare stateside soundboard-capture from the Bordeaux, France duo to tide you over until you do get the chance. Flexing material from all the way back on to the present, as well as what seems like a few as-yet-unreleased but nonetheless well received cuts from the smattering of basement dwellers in attendance, Looch takes the opportunity to unleash his supercharged French accent on the unwary, his and her ragged psychobilly garage-surf blown out all the way to pure sludge. In more simple terms, Magnetix make filthy rock ‘n’ roll and this is a crazy crusty – but faithful – document of the abject mess they trail behind them.
From lo-fi punk to distorted blues, this super-cruddy and twisted take is nevertheless sneaky, hiding space-rock stings in its tail over which Looch alternates between a snarling English and a worse French. His amps protest throughout, eviscerating feedback mingling with killer post-punk riffing on 2013 single “Impaction” (Looch once had a revelation upon hearing Closer, a record that opened up decades’ worth of new-found influence for him), budget loops and spicy FX making for a bruising, sweaty and altogether head-banging encounter. In the same vein, “Break Up The Phone” is similarly unstoppable, a hot slice of battering-ram garage-punk.
The six-minute opener from 2009’s blistering Positively Negative LP, “Living In A Box” prefers a doomed route, its tortured cacophony of guitar and noise digging out a reverbed-to-fuck surf riff that comes on like a knife-fight simultaneously taking place in a car crusher and in treacle. And, in turn, just as it did in 2011, the no-messin’ muscular excess of “Rest Of My Life” rips so hard that its distortion is rendered downright squelchy, no longer capable of maintaining shape and just liquefying into straight noise, Aggy battering the kit like it gone did her some wrong, Looch’s vocal an outright howl into the void. Wish you were there? Now you can be.
~Magnetix Live In San Francisco is out now via Castle Face.~