White Noise Sound - White Noise Sound
- Written by Kenneth McMurtrie
The Jesus And Mary Chain seem to have tripled in size and become Welsh, at least the opener 'Sunset' would fool you into thinking so on this excellent debut release by White Noise Sound. It's one relentless, overdriven slab of fuzz from start to finish. Auditory Red Bull. Similarly on 'Blood' the band bring to mind The Dandy Warhols when they were anything to shout about (think practically any track from Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia) or even early Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Whatever the comparisons these songs lay waste to all before them.
Between the two and after 'Blood' though the story is completely different. There's absolutely no loss of form or dip in the class of the music on offer, just a complete change of musical path. Now we're talking perfectly formed 21st Century psychedelia. In popular terms you probably need to go back as far as the first Verve album (or at least the live performances thereof) to find anything similar, although of course in the underground Spacemen 3, Loop etc. are obvious modern touchstones. We're talking eight minute tracks and four minute ones that feel like 12. Shutting themselves away from the world for the album's gestation period has paid massive dividends in the work's maturity and listenability.
Shoegaze seemed to be one of the influential forms of music making a comeback in 2010 and White Noise Sound masterfully do their bit for the genre on 'No Place To Hide' which has a final two minutes worthy of any of the original exponents. Co-produced with a great deal of fellow feeling by Sonic Boom and SFA's Cian Ciaran the quality evident throughout is going to be very hard to top in the rest of this year and as debut albums go it has surely secured its historical place too.
Final track '(In Both) Dreams And Ecstasies' has a massive sound that will bring tears to the eyes of the most diehard fans of live shows so start buying shares in Kleenex the minute you see a tour announced. And get a ticket for the show too.
