The peat bogs of Northern Europe have been the source of some of themost exciting archaeological finds of last century. Fortuitously, thechemical content of these viscous pools of goo was such that corpsesfished out thousands of years later were hardly decomposed at all,allowing anthropologists to solve many a historical riddle of the earlyIron Age. Bog Bodies are currently on display at the Museum of Ireland,stunningly lifelike bronzed cadavers, many fully dressed in the costumeof the period. Earthmonkey is the work of a homo erectus named PeatBog, who has managed a similar archaeological excavation on Audiosapien.Perhaps it is less significant to the scientific community, butEarthmonkey's terrestrial, Neolithic stomp is a deliriously accuratereconstruction of the hairiest psych-prog of 30 years past. This is nota zoo-bound monkey of the poo-throwing variety; this monkey is aholdover from a previous evolutionary phase, a giant ape that boundsacross the fertile landscape on its knuckles looking for sustenance,but finding only amanita muscaria on which to subsist. So thisEarthmonkey vibrates to an ancient shamanistic current, riding the waveof Terrence McKenna's archaic revolution, which Peat Bog translatesinto a series of deep and droning rhythmic jazz-rock jams, liberallysprinkled with moondust by producer Steven Stapleton. This pairingmakes sense, as Peat Bog has collaborated with Nurse With Wound onseveral releases as Inflatable Sideshow, and Stapleton's productiontouches jettison this material straight to the heart of the Kraut. Therhythms on Audiosapien are of the trance-inducing JakiLiebezeit mould, with a variety of lysergically-effected guitar riffs,saxophone blasts and atmospheric electronic textures, unashamedlyevoking mid-period of Amon Duul II or arcane Kosmische jam bands Kraanand Xhol Caravan. This hairy, future-primitive quagmire is augmented bycontemporary beat constructions, which places Earthmonkey vaguely inthe techno-prog neighborhood of The Orb and Eat Static. "Reflections OnNative Yard 52" lifts the bassline from The Rolling Stones' "2000 LightYears From Home," but veers into an entirely different wormhole: acyclical rhythm that perpetually reigns in the cosmic bounce of thelead guitar. Elsewhere, the roll of a didgeridoo creates a droning,ethnicized backdrop for mellow grooves, every empty space filled withghostly vocal samples and bizarre Stapletonian textures. The plot ofthe Lord of the Rings is recounted by a young British lad withsound-effects accompaniment on "'And They Go Off To This Place...,'"and the two-part song suite of "Burningman" attempts to evoke theprimitive desert paganism at the heart of the annual Nevadafestival/rave/catharsis. The deeply stoned third-eye soloing on "MakeMe One With Everything" is so immersive, it makes the goofy song titlealmost completely forgivable. Plumbed from the depths of Ireland'sgelatinous fens, Audiosapien is the sound of psychedeliade-evolving into the shaggy depths of a dimly remembered past. And mostimportantly, it doesn't suck. samples:
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