Mt. Mountain – OMED & EP
Flash back to April of this year when Cardinal Fuzz helped usher Mt. Mountain’s Dust LP into being. Desert-rock with a difference, for the band hail from Perth, Australia and their desert is the outback, it built on the psychedelically droning foundations of last year’s Cosmos Terros LP with a masterclass in mood and atmosphere. High-flying prop-drone sounded like distant didgeridoo; spidery guitar and hazy flute combined to form nocturnal animal calls, organ dither the bedding for gentle hand-drums, barely-there strumming and hypnotic backing vocals that dripped from the speakers. Back before Dust and Cosmos Terros, however, there was first the Mt. Mountain EP and before that the four-track demo OMED. Digging deep into the archives, Cardinal Fuzz now present both afresh: the repress of EP available for the first time outside Australia and OMED for the first time on vinyl.
OMED kicks off in a deceptively sound-deadening fog, dropping out almost entirely for a while only to resurrect itself with staticky pick-up, a wandering bass-line and a mesmeric, ever-intensifying riff that latterly explodes into technicolour, space-prog brilliance. Two sleepy, drifting psych-rockers fill out the middle section, white-hot wah rousing them from their slumber before OMED closes out with the stunning Doors-ian dirge “White Horses”, a track in which shuffling percussion and a lost-down-a-well vocal mix with more tickling wah, which this time mounts the fiery titular steed with 90 seconds to go, strapping some rockets to its saddle and blazing a trail off into the sun, eddies of dust in its wake.
EP opens up in turn with a bout of properly excellent and tremulous psych-rock, liquid stoner solos and a sky-high vocal melting into Psychic Ills-style fuzz. Followed by two more blissful affairs that come lightly countrified by lonesome harmonica and swooning acoustic chords, the shimmering “FX/My Love” is then suitably dependent on warped back-masking effects before going all Doctor Who, radiophonic majesty bouncing along on an oh-so-similar chug and whistle before disappearing off into guitar noodling ripe for mind-expansion. Delightfully doomed chimes finally announce the heavy-lidded closer, “Ghosts”, a syrupy fuzz-banger that shreds righteously at its oppressive climax. Containing some of the band’s best material to date, both OMED and EP are absolutely in need of your attention right now if you missed them first time around.
Best track: “She Runs”
~The re-released versions of the OMED and EP are out now via Cardinal Fuzz.~