Dalmatian Rex and the Eigentones
Psychedelic monsters
Music 4 goldfish
Should come adorned with one of those government health warnings that requires you to approach with caution, adhere to the recommended dosage and that in the occurrence of the suffering of side effects to seek professional help.
It's quite obvious that chief Eigentone Paul is one of pop's great eccentrics whose lineage taps into the mindsets of Van Vliet, Johnston, Stanshall, Zappa and the Goons, clearly reading from a different songbook from the rest of us - no doubt the wrong page to.
Do not adjust your hi-fi for they control the width, the length and the space between your ears, veering from the crooked to the creepy, the ominous to the odd, the inspired to the insane 'psychedelic monsters' is a 47 minute trip to a place you perhaps hoped you'd never go, a place of the strange, the wondrous, the wonky and the melodically mischievous.
Its been a while in incubation, 'Dalmatian Rex have been quietly grooming and nurturing the follow up to 2003's desirably wired Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band meets Butthole Surfers 'Majikal Moose Moustache Musique'. Nineteen tracks feature within including this years much loved brace of singles - the dippily Devo-esque 'Geek' and the sublimely chilled softly psyched UFO / tin foil / robot paranoiac isolation of the smoked 'everyone is a robot except me and my monkey'. Nice to see that old habits die hard - getting to be something of a trademark now with each new album phase the band members names have changed - these days finding them sporting zoo animal titles (don't even go there) while fans of the whacked out song titles of past times (whoever could forget the immortal 'suddenly he became attracted to a deep fat fryer') will find the impish Beefheart / Stanshall like pen well sharpened with the inclusion of nuggets titled 'the frieshian who dreams of multi dimensional budgerigars' (incidentally very minimalist and clearly of note for fans of early career Fall albeit meeting Rooney on a rainy Manchester night) and the Half Man Half Biscuit - ist 'the drummer from Showaddywaddy is going to kick my head in' (really I'm being serious just don't go there).
Estranged from normality 'psychedelic monsters' is a surreal trek through a Lear-esque labyrinth, a place located in the overlapping voids where the various strands and species of pops orbits converge, psychedelic in terms of the fractured confusion of a loose free spirited post Floyd Barrett mindset rather than psychedelic in the Barrett Floyd meticulous / perfectionist / visionary / seer mode and yet scribed with an anything goes Zappa-esque appeal.
Opening to the nonsense like eerie drone ambient psychosis of 'I'm scared of you Japanese Cheese' and the unparalleled wig flipped angular grip of 'I'm not scared of you mushy peas' - 'psychedelic monsters' makes its intentions to mess with your fringe clear from the start, between the skewed, absurd and abstract you'll find love noted odes to Thunderbirds characters - 'lady Penelope', strange warped Popticians / John Cooper Clarke styled prose ('Albatross y'), momentary interludes ('flying florescent jelly fish', the huge ever growing pulsating brain that is the parting 'at the bottom of the sea…' and 'rhubarbermarmalade') and lunatic hymns for the lonesome and disenfranchised 'weirdnessy'.
Between the cracks emerges brief moments of lucidity courtesy of the toe tapping beat grooved sugar tipped harmony laced 'Octopus I love you' and the electro swirling braids of the chugging power pop grinds of 'tarzan, jane, superman and lois lane' which at times sounds like the Weddoes being piped through the ether from a parallel universe. Then there's the nuts down motorik grind of the gnarled austere post punk bleakness of 'the loneliest whale in the world' coming across like some skin peeling psychosis wracked prime time Joy Division while the unravelling and punishing pulse racing monochromatic kraut grind of the power surging 'ever so slowly losing my mind' may just have the Hawkwind space cadets among you swooning in mesmeric admiration.
Clearly the work of a fractured genius.
