Gunslingers – Supreme Asphalt Doser
There’s wild, and then there’s downright feral and Gregory Raimo is very much the latter. Resurrecting his Gunslingers guise after a decade dormant, Supreme Asphalt Doser sees Raimo channelling his Hôpital De La Conception work, as well as his scorching, recent solo material with a speed-freak swagger and a no-wave regard for structure and style. Accordingly, after a relatively accessible opening 1-2, Raimo and his psychedelically charged, bad-trip improv cannonball off the top rope into long-hair hard-rock, DIY garage, counter-culture proto-punk and free-form biker-blues.
A series of super-charged jams, side A doesn’t mess about, launching straight into white-knuckle space-punk, its waveform-guitars unspooling pure heat as Raimo’s wailing vocal lags behind the speeding mass. The title-track chops and changes its hard-chugging tempos furiously, frenetic solos and Raimo’s evil, distorted sneer ending in blown-out noise. Surf-rock DNA stains the fabric of “Detuned For Cheap”, marauding bass parts bringing about hypnotic convulsions in the faithful.
The largely instrumental flip then leads the charge with punishing feedback and apocalyptic outriders harnessing rhythm and blackened blues, string-bending torture giving way to southern-fried proto-punk on “Be-Bop-A-Lula-Louie-Loua”, deep bayou standards mercilessly pawed over with coruscating electrified guitar, backwoods brawlers drowning in honkytonk liquor to the sound of battered percussion – played as found – in Storm Katrina salvage yards. Man and guitar in unholy union, Raimo closes out as only Raimo could, uncompromisingly, and with the experimental accompaniment of extracts from Arthur Lipsett’s 1967 disconnected film Fluxes.
Not for the wary. Not really for the uninitiated. And certainly not for the fearful, Supreme Asphalt Doser really is a bit of a doozy.
Best track: “We’re The Real Sinners”
~Supreme Asphalt Doser is released 20th January 2023 via the collaborative efforts of Cardinal Fuzz, Opaque Dynamo, and Feeding Tube Records.~