Never Mind The Parabolics

I found a piece of paper, scrawled on over ten years ago during a stoned viewing of schools TV late at night. It read, "Nine times dark is death". I used to write down everything. Can't be arsed now. Don't smoke dope any more either. I think I'm probably at about 5 times dark just now.

MOUNTED INSANITY CANNON - SHORT CONTROLLED BURSTS FROM... (Foulharmonic)

A "mini-album"? No shit! Eight tracks in less than five and a half minutes - that's 17 seconds shorter than Napalm Death's infamous 1987 Peel session. This recording may go through "mini-" and come out on the sparse side of "micro-", but let's not complain. There are plenty of local bands whom we'd love to see make records as short as this! Brief it may be, but Mounted Insanity Cannon's latest is dense too, squeezing in cheap beats, vocal howls, metal guitars and more distrorted noise than a Merzbow boxset. Well, maybe not quite, but this record is one big pitted, tarnished blob of sound that feels like it ought to leave a greasy residue around the ears.

This is MIC's strength, but their weakness as well. True, information comes thick and fast and it's all very thrilling in a way, but sometimes the music just feels like a bunch of unfinished sketches or half-arsed gags. "TV Remote" mostly consists of fragmented samples from some idle channel hopping minute, which is about as close to a sampling cliche as you can get without promising a journey into sound. Once man's insanity is another man's inanity.

If only the tracks were given time to develop, this music could be a glorious noise. The most fully formed piece on the record, "Conflict Desert Swing" sounds something like Middle Eastern funk outfit The Baghdaddies under nine fathoms of sonic soup, or Cab Calloway dropped unceremoniously into some demon dimension equivalent of the Gulf War. In some ways I'd rather listen to this idea developed and intensified for the entire five minutes. The accompanying press release promises a forthcoming "big band live show", which might be a little more satisfying than this blinking blipvert recording. The final track is entitled "Open With A Joke". Well, feel free, my dear Cannons, but try to make sure you've got something more substantial to follow up with, otherwise it all feels a bit pointless. Mounted Insanity Cannon have got the skills and imagination to make a truly coruscating and brain mangling record, but sadly this isn't it.