Blaak Heat Shujaa

The Storm Generation

BY Natalie Zina WalschotsPublished Dec 18, 2012

7
NYC-based Tee Pee Records often favours records that explore the darker reaches of psychedelia, and their latest offering from Los-Angeles-by-way-of-Paris experimental unit Blaak Heat Shujaa continues this trend. The Storm Generation is their sprawling, dusky debut EP, recorded with Scott Reeder (Kyuss) in the Mojave Desert. A sense of heat and fading light pervades The Storm Generation, combining a feeling of sweat relief from the sun with the looming threat of the creatures that only come out at night to hunt. The thick rock bass lines define the album, snaking through each song like the eerie patterns left by a rattler traversing a sand dune. Aside from the arid heat that serves as an overarching musical theme, the record is also coloured by elements of garage rock, surf, classic Western film soundtracks and even the occasional Middle Eastern twinge. The wild, reverberating psychedelia of "The Incident at Stinson Beach" is particularly captivating, but the highlight of the album is unquestionably Nobel Prize-nominated poet Ron Whitehead, who has frequently appeared on stage, and even toured, with the band. His presence on the record takes The Storm Generation into an even more ambitious orbit. This is a sweet, hot, brain-stretching album.
(Tee Pee)

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